Permanent Mission of Brazil in Geneva
71, avenue Louis Casaï  - Case Postale 165
1216 Cointrin  Geneva - Switzerland


Human Rights Council
Informal Consultations for the Second Session
7-8 September 2006


UNIVERSAL PERIODIC REVIEW MECHANISM

INTERVENTION BY BRAZIL

Mr Chairman,
We would like to express our gratitude to the Ambassador of Morocco for chairing yesterday the informal consultations on the UPR, which were very useful to better understand  the functioning of the mechanisms in other organizations;

As it has been said before by many delegations, to be effective, UPR must avoid selectivity, excessive politicization and not duplicate the functions of other mechanisms of the UN human rights system;

Instead of overlapping with other mechanisms of the UN human rights system, UPR could be complementary to them, reinforcing their role. UPR could reiterate and emphasize the conclusions, recommendations and requests made by those mechanisms. UPR could also help treaty bodies and special mechanisms by addressing the follow-up process of their recommendations;

Therefore there are two possible contributions of the UPR to the UN human rights system: (1) it could serve as an instrument to concentrate information on each country from those mechanism; (2) it could also serve as an opportunity in which pending issues from the mechanisms of the UN human rights system concerning a country could be channeled and addressed to the country during the exam;

My intervention will be divided into four parts: (a) possible structure of the future UPR; (b) functioning; (c) standing or legal basis; (d) outcome and follow-up;

Structure: 
Brazil supports a kind of a hybrid system, composed both by States (Members and Observers), which will carry out the interactive dialogue, and experts, who will be responsible for the preparatory process. NGOs and representatives of civil society could also participate in the process. They could provide information to the experts and could also take part into the interactive dialogue;

Experts could come from special mechanisms, treaty bodies or also from the future “expert adviser” body. We would not oppose the idea of creating an “expert chamber”, whose members would have a term-limited mandate;

For the organization of the work, the group of experts could elect a Rapporteur among themselves;

Experts (or the UPR Rapporteur) should collect and compile the existing information from many sources on the country (treaty bodies, special mechanisms, NGOs, OHCHR, national institutions of human rights, international agencies and programs);

To update, clarify and fill the gaps of the available information, experts would request more detailed information from the concerned country. For this purpose, experts could prepare a list of issues to be sent in advance to the country under exam;

After receiving the answers from the concerned country, experts could draft a questionnaire that would serve as a “road map” to the interactive dialogue. The country under exam should receive in advance the questionnaire in order to prepare itself properly to the oral exam by other States;

The questionnaire would be focused on the issues raised by experts to the concerned country. States and civil society could suggest questions to be included in the questionnaire;

The expert Rapporteur could write the report on the results of the interactive dialogue. After being considered by the panel of experts, the draft report, with draft conclusions and recommendations, would be sent to the concerned country to receive any additional comments and more accurate information;

The concerned country would have the right to make comments on the draft report. If its remarks were not included in the text of the report, they could be annexed to it;

The final report with the conclusions and recommendations would be submitted to the consideration of the Human Rights Council;

B) Functioning:
The frequency of the exams must respect a regular periodicity that would permit an overall view of each and every country and, therefore, preserve the character of universality of the mechanism. When establishing the UPR periodicity, we must consider, on one hand, the capacity of the OHCHR to respond to the demands created by the UPR mechanisms; on the other hand, the capacity of States to properly prepare themselves to participate in the mechanism. As a consequence, the UPR mechanism would only works if it bear in mind the capacity-building of the States and if the OHCHR provide cooperation and assistance to them accordingly;

Another aspect to be considered is that the periodicity of the review must be short enough to reflect some specific changes - such as the adoption of a governmental policy for human rights –; but, at the same time, it must be long enough to provide an accurate follow-up of the process – such as the assessment of the impacts of a specific governmental policy on civil society; 

C) Standing:
Brazil deems that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the international human rights conventions to which the State is part should serve as a minimal basis for the Review mechanism; 

National obligations, whenever they have higher standards than international instruments, could also be addressed by the UPR mechanism. For this purpose, representatives of national civil society could, for instance, address the panel of experts or also participate in the interactive dialogue in order to ask for the compliance of national obligations; 

D) Outcome and Follow-Up:
As mentioned before, a UPR Rapporteur could be chosen among the experts by themselves to make a report on the results of the interactive dialogue and to draft conclusions and recommendations of the panel of experts. The report, with its conclusions and recommendations, must be submitted to the Human Rights Council;

In its conclusions, the UPR should, whenever necessary, recommend the OHCHR and the international community to provide more cooperation in order to address problems identified in the country examined;

If it is necessary, UPR could recommend the visit of thematic special procedures to the country examined;

UPR should also give an opportunity to report good practices and to reflect progress made in the field of human rights;

UPR could focus its conclusions on the implementation of the recommendation of treaty bodies and even of thematic special procedures. In the case of non-implementation, UPR could identify the reasons for that and try to indicate possible solutions;

 In its conclusions, the UPR could also assess if the Government has complied with its national legal obligations. It could event evaluate if policies implemented by the Government are effective enough to deal with the problems of human rights;

Another possibility for the outcome process would be the publication, by the OHCHR, of a global report covering all countries. If the periodicity of the exam is respected, comprising the exam of every country, the global report would be composed of periodical sets. It would provide a universal view of the situation of human rights in every country. Another advantage of a global report resulting from the UPR mechanism is that it would provide, for the first time, the compilation of many data that are at present scattered over many sources. It could also stimulate a more solid and more precise evaluation of the progress made by States in the field of human rights.

Mr Chairman,
Brazil  thinks that the UPR mechanisms will only be effective if it be carried out in a spirit of dialogue and cooperation;
As stated before by our delegation, we consider that UPR can be an opportunity to understand the reality of each country;
It could also be an opportunity to improve their capacity-building in facing problems in the field of human rights.

Thank you.








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