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On 14 September the Committee on the Rights of the Child opened its 52nd session with the adoption of the agenda and programme of work.
In her opening remarks, Ms. Yanghee Lee, the Chairperson of the Committee made a mention of the two “worst” situations the world had witnessed in the form of the financial crisis and A/H1N1flu. She expressed hope that children affected worldwide would be provided with adequate treatment.
Mr. Ibrahim Salama, Chief of the Human Rights Treaties Branch of the OHCHR, talked about a few important developments that had taken place since the last session. He mentioned the adoption during the 11th session of the HRC of two resolutions of particular relevance to the Committee: resolution 11/1 for the establishment of an Open-ended Working Group on an OP to the CRC on communications procedure and the resolution 11/7 on the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children which will be submitted to the GA for consideration, with a view to their adoption on the 20th anniversary of the Convention. Mr. Salama noted that the Working Group would explore the possibility of exploring the possibility of elaborating an OP to the CRC to provide a communications procedure complementary to the reporting procedure under the CRC.
Mr. Salama said that the upcoming celebration of the 20th anniversary event of the Convention scheduled to take place on 8 and 9 October 2009 had already attracted a lot of interest among States parties and civil society organizations.
In relation to the harmonisation of working methods, Mr. Salama mentioned that the 9th Inter-Committee Meeting took place in June where members of different treaty bodies discussed the issue of streamlining and strengthening the treaty bodies system. Mr. Salama noted that the 10th ICM would take place in November and would be devoted to a discussion on follow-up to concluding observations and views of treaty bodies in order to identify best practices in respect of follow- up.
He concluded by noting that the Committee’s agenda will be heavy for the next three weeks: apart from the examination of the State party reports of eight countries, the Committee members have meetings with the UN system entities and NGOs and will have to prepare the agenda for the next year when the Committee will meet in two chambers.
On 14 September, the Committee members met for the first time with the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict. It was a valuable opportunity to reflect on how two mechanisms could further complement each other.
The Committee Secretary Maja Andrijasevic-Boko announced that since its last session the Committee had received 17 reports under the Convention including from Algeria, Greece, Seychelles, Australia, Turkey, Andorra, Myanmar, Liberia, Cyprus. 4 reports were received under the Optional Protocols from Australia under OPAC and OPSC, Belgium for OPSC and Belarus for OPAC.