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Summary: CRIN is contacting all candidates standing for election to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in December 2010. We are asking them about their experience in children's rights, what they think they can contribute to the Committee, what they think about key issues, their vision for the Committee and, importantly, how they see NGOs' role.
Hatem Kotrane, 56, from Tunisia, is a Professor-Director in the Department of Private Law at the University of Tunis. He has served on the Committee on the Rights of the Child since 2003. Mr Kotrane has been an expert consultant to both UNICEF and ILO and provided consultation on the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Click here to view Mr Kotrane's CV Why do you want to serve on the Committee? The Committee faces many challenges as it goes forward with its work, particularly with the Optional Protocols and the Complaints Mechanism. The Committee strongly needs a jurist, a legal side to the composition of members and I feel I can bring that to the table. What do you think you can contribute to the Committee? I believe there are four major areas where I can contribute. Firstly, my legal expertise as I just mentioned. Secondly, my work in co-ordinating the General Comment on the best interests of the child (Article 3), work I still need to complete. Thirdly, my responsibility is increasing with the Complaints Mechanism for the CRC, and my work on the complaints mechanism for the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights will enable me to make a major contribution to this new complaints mechanism. Finally, I feel I can make a significant contribution to the Committee's work related to Arab countries. I recently worked for the Arab League of States and possess a strong understanding of this region. What issues do you feel needs more attention? I believe there are a few areas that need serious attention, notably economic and social rights, standards of living and the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), which are a big challenge. What has been the best achievement in your career? I would say my most significant achievement has been the contributions I have made in my role as a Professor, through writing articles and publishing books. My work in this area has made a big difference in many countries, even developed countries. What is your vision for the UN Committee? How could it be made more effective? The Committee should be co-operating more closely with other UN treaty bodies. There are many repetitions across treaty bodies and there should be much more focus on co-ordination. For example, the ICESCR and the CRC where both Committees are often asking the same questions. We should be focussed on children's rights, not on individual Committees and what they achieve as individual bodies. My view is that we should have one independent expert Committee overseeing all human rights issues, where states come to Geneva for two days to report on all human rights. Children will not be neglected in this new set up. We should also have one complaints mechanism for all human rights, broken down into sections for individual rights. This should be a permanent body and furthermore the complaints mechanism and process should be separate entities. What do you think the biggest challenge the Committee faces is? Our biggest challenge is to raise the level of expertise in the Committee. In particular, the Committee needs more expert lawyers, especially with the OPSC being such a legal Protocol. Ninety percent of the questions on this Optional Protocol are legal in nature and we need to represent this in the composition of the Committee. A broad composition is important but we are dealing with rights and this needs to be reflected in the number of lawyers on the Committee. How do you think the committee could work more effectively with NGOs? The Committee should engage more with NGOs and be in open consultation with the NGO Group for the CRC and CRIN on how to go about this. The pre-session involvement of NGOs is very good, much better than for other treaty bodies. In addition, NGOs should be more involved with the work on General Comments. They should receive the draft versions and be able to present their point of view. If you weren't working in children's rights, what would you be doing? Teaching law. From the first day of University, I knew I would be a Professor. How would you sum up children's rights in one word? I would say the right to express themselves.