OMCT Intervention at the 16th Annual Meeting of Special Rapporteurs

Item VII: Consultation with NGOs and NHRIs

30 June 2009

Mister Chair, Madams and Sirs,

OMCT would like to take this opportunity to reiterate its firm support to the work of the Special Procedures mandate holders as well as to thank them for their sustained collaboration with NGOs, including OMCT.

OMCT follows with great interest the work undertaken by the Special Procedures mandate holders within the framework of their annual meetings and thereafter, and welcomes the opportunity to share its comments and experiences.

1/ Collaboration between the newly appointed Special Representative of the Secretary General on Violence against Children and other Special Procedures

OMCT warmly welcomes the appointment of Ms Marta Santos Pais as Special Representative on Violence against Children (SR-VAC). This is a first important step of collaboration among mandate holders on issues relating to violence against children as a common issue of profound concern.

It is essential to stress that the SR-VAC mandate covers all the aspects covered by the UN Study on VAC. In this regard, it is noteworthy that the SR-VAC will have to address areas of violence against children that are not covered by other Special Procedures such as violence against children in the home and family, violence in institutions, in the schools and in detention centres, police custody and remand homes.

Moreover, we already foresee common concerns for the SR-VAC and other Special Procedures dealing either with the rights of the child (such as the SR on Sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, the SP on trafficking in persons, especially women and children and the SRep. of the SG on children and armed conflict, and also the SR on right to health and on right to education) or with issues of violence (such as the SR on violence against women, its causes and consequences, the SR on torture and other CIDTP, the SR on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, SR on contemporary forms of slavery and the WG on arbitrary detention). In order to maximize the effectiveness of the work aimed at eradicating violence against children, close cooperation between the mandate holders concerned will be essential on such cross-cutting issues.[1]

The same holds true in case questions of violence against children are addressed in a specific country or reciprocally when a country SR deals with a situation of violence against children in the country covered by his/her mandate.

With regard to such situations of mutual concerns, OMCT would like to reiterate the following suggestions to the SP:

• to meet regularly with the SR-VAC;
• to carry out joint fact-finding country visits whenever relevant;
• to prepare joint thematic researches and reports;
• to mainstream/integrate a child rights dimension in the “violence-related” mandates and country mandates;
• to provide the SR-VAC with information about how other mandates relating to child rights or violence have dealt with violence against children in their reports; country mandates could do the same;
• to introduce reciprocal references in the SP reports;
• to issue joint responses/ communications on cases of violence against children.

2/ Follow-up activities

OMCT very much welcomes the continued discussions of the Special Procedures on the specific question of follow-up activities, whether for communications, country visits, cooperation with treaty bodies and human rights mechanisms, as well as within the framework of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) (ref: document entitle “Special Procedures’ follow-up activities”). These follow-up activities remain a challenge and OMCT would like to encourage the Special Procedure mandate holders to proceed with these follow-ups in a more consistent manner.

As to the specific issue of communications, OMCT welcomes the decision by the Special Procedures to work on a common report on communications that would be issued at each Human Rights Council session. This will indeed facilitate the access to information, and will hopefully enable a more sustained follow-up of the cases.

3/ Root causes of violence

Finally, in the room today observing your debates are the NGO participants from 15 countries from around the world currently taking part in the OMCT Seminar “Addressing the economic, social and cultural root causes of violence through the UN Special Procedures System” here in Geneva. They recognise the importance of the special procedures system in protecting human rights and wish to further encourage the mandate holders to focus attention, individually and collectively, on dealing with the root causes of violence in all their activities, including during follow-up activities. They also wish to thank both those mandate holders who have met or will meet with them and the Secretariat for having facilitated these important exchanges.

OMCT has distributed to all mandate holders the position papers arising from the Special Procedures Seminars in 2007 and 2008 that reflect the concerns of the participants and will, in the course of this week, share with them the country information prepared by the participants in the current seminar.

[1] See GA 2007 resolution on the Rights of the Child, A/C.3/62/L.24/Rev.1. Extracts: “59. Recommends that the Special Representative, taking care to avoid duplication with relevant United Nations mechanisms and treaty bodies: […] (d) Work closely and cooperate fully with relevant United Nations treaty bodies and mechanisms, including, but not limited to, the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography and the Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially in women and children, within their respective mandates, building upon existing inter-agency structures, and bearing in mind the ongoing process of the reviewing of mandates in the Human Rights Council; […]

61. Requests the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on violence against children, upon her/his appointment, and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict to cooperate and coordinate their activities in carrying out their respective mandates, bearing in mind their complementarity, in order to ensure that no child at risk of violence, in any situation, including situations of armed conflict, foreign occupation, genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, terrorism or hostage-taking, or where peacekeeping operations are deployed, is left uncovered;”