Establishment of two Working Groups on the Universal Periodic Review and the Review of Mandates and Mechanisms

Last Friday, 21 July 2006, the President of the Human Rights Council officially launched the process of informal consultations which in accordance with Human Rights Council decisions 2006/103 and 2006/104 will lead to the establishment of the two Working Groups on the Universal Periodic Review and the Review of Mandates and Mechanisms respectively.

The schedule for the following open-ended intersessional consultations has been re-defined as follows:

Wednesday 2 August 2006: 10am - 1pm, Room XIX (on both issues)
Thursday 7 September 2006: 10am - 1pm and 3.00 – 6.00pm, Room XVIII
Friday 8 September 2006:  10am - 1pm and 3.00 – 6.00pm, Room XVIII.

The President also indicated that he would henceforth delegate the work on these two parallel processes to other members of the HRC Bureau in the following manner:

Universal Periodic Review: Ambassador of Morocco
Review of Special Procedures mandates: Ambassador of the Czech Republic
Expert advice (Sub-Commission): Ambassador of Jordan
Complaints mechanism (1503 procedure): Ambassador of Switzerland.

The following background documents were circulated by the Secretariat as reference documents at last Friday's informal consultations:

• Non-paper: Mechanisms of the CHR/HRC (in alphabetical order of main topic)
• Non-paper: Mechanisms of the CHR/HRC (in alphabetical order of mandate-holders)
• E/CN.4/2006/16: Report of the seminar on enhancing and strengthening the effectiveness of the Special Procedures of the CHR
• A/HRC/1/SR.18 and 19: Summary records of HRC meetings held on Wednesday, 28 June 2006
• Report of the Inter-sessional open-ended working group on enhancing the effectiveness of the mechanisms of the Commission on Human Rights (decision 2000/109)
• List of all persons currently mandated to carry out the special procedures mandates of the Commission on Human Rights (prepared in accordance with Commission resolution 2004/76).

In additions, two contributions by States were circulated (by Argentina and by Canada), as well as a contribution by an NGO (Amnesty International), which had been earlier received by the Secretariat. Please note that all above-mentioned documents are available on HRC-related Extranet pages.

Please be advised that two additional HRC-related extranet pages have been created dedicated to the two working groups:

• HRC extranet page on the Working Group on the Review of Mandates and Mechanisms
• HRC extranet page on the Working Group on Universal Periodic Review
• NGOs are encouraged to regularly visit the two extranet pages, accessible through the Human Rights Council webpage at:
  http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/. NGOs wishing to send informal written contributions to the two processes (to be placed on the respective extranet pages) may do so by contacting the NGO liaison office electronically or by phone (+41 22 917 9656).