02 September 2010
























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NGOs’ Role in Universal Periodic Review, Deadline for Submissions Extended to 20 November 2007

New York, 23 October 2007 – The United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) has decided to hold its first session of the Universal Periodic Review from 7-18 April 2008. The HRC will review sixteen States, in this order: Bahrain, Ecuador, Tunisia, Morocco, Indonesia, Finland, United Kingdom, India, Brazil, Philippines, Algeria, Poland, Netherlands, South Africa, Czech Republic, and Argentina.

The HRC’s so-called “institution-building package” of June 2007 – Resolution 5/1 – provides for the active engagement of NGOs in the UPR. In particular, the review is based on a three-part set of documents – information provided by the State; the HRC’s own documentation and other UN documents on human rights in the country concerned; and information from other stakeholders, including NGOs, which is to be summarized by Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which serves as the HRC Secretariat.

Deadline for NGO Submissions Extended

The OHCHR recently announced that the deadline for the submission of NGO information for this session would be 30 October 2007. Because it was announced on 8 October, the deadline allowed only three weeks to prepare information. On 11 October, a group of human rights organizations sent a letter to the High Commissioner to request an extension of the deadline. The groups – Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR), and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) – gave the following reasons:

  • To allow NGO participation to be “inclusive, coordinated, focused and timely,” which would be hard to ensure within three weeks;

  • To allow time for assistance to NGOs who are interacting with the HRC for the first time;

  • To “limit duplication of information and/or gaps in coverage” through coordination between NGOs, which would take time;

  • To ensure that NGO information to the UPR process would not be outdated: “The 30 October deadline will mean that by the time a country is reviewed in April, NGO submissions will be six months old and might become less representative of the reality of the country under review”; and because

  • The 30 October deadline was established for the session originally planned for February 2008, and the session since had been postponed to April.

The groups recommended that the Secretariat delay the deadline to 31 December. On October 16, the Secretariat announced that the “tentative deadline” for submissions by NGOs to the first UPR session had been extended to 20 November 2007. More instructions form the Secretariat:

  • To submit information for possible inclusion in OHCHR’s 10-page summary of information from stakeholders, NGOs are asked to send information to UPRsubmissions@ohchr.org.

  • Because of the four-year periodicity of the UPR, stakeholders’ input on each country under review is supposed to cover only a four-year period.

  • The OHCHR’s Civil Society Unit is expected to provide additional guidelines shortly.

  • The OHCHR’s summary of NGO information will follow the “general guidelines” established at the Sixth Session (Decision 6/102).

  • The summary of stakeholders' input prepared by OHCHR will be made available on-line.

The Information Note for NGOs, with amended deadline, is available in Arabic, English, French, Spanish, and Russian here.

In addition to submitting information, NGOs and other “relevant stakeholders” may participate in the UPR by attending the reviews, making comments before the adoption of the review outcome, and participating in the follow-up and implementation to each review outcome (per Resolution 5/1).

Efforts to Coordinate NGO Information

On 28 September, NGOs discussed their involvement in the UPR at a meeting organized by the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the UN (CONGO) (summary here).

  • Conectas Direitos Humanos, a Brazilian NGO, stressed the importance of a nationally-based process, including national consultations in which NGOs can participate. She suggested that events take place in each country during its review in Geneva in order to raise the national visibility of the process.

  • She noted that collaboration with Geneva-based organizations would be critical for bringing NGO voices together in the international arena, as well as for advice on organizing the information and on advocacy strategies.

  • Some exchanges addressed NGOs’ needs in preparing contributions to the UPR. Suggestions included an information exchange between NGOs at both the national and international levels, including a contact database of contributing NGOs.

  • Some argued that NGO contributions to the UPR should be thought of as distinct from the process of contributing to treaty bodies, because the UPR process is a more political one.

According to Geneva-based NGOs who work closely with the HRC, NGOs in each country under review have not yet decided how to organize their submissions. Two longer-term initiatives for information-sharing are planned:

  • ISHR and other human rights NGOs reportedly may hold a training program on the HRC with regional human rights defenders, to take place in Brazil in November.

  • Regional human rights NGOs in Asia and elsewhere have developed training activities with their national partners.

Future UPR Sessions

The second session of the UPR will take place from 5-16 May 2008. States to be reviewed, in this order: Gabon, Ghana, Peru, Guatemala, Benin, Republic of Korea, Switzerland, Pakistan, Zambia, Japan, Ukraine, Sri Lanka, France, Tonga, Romania, and Mali.

The third session is scheduled for 1-12 December 2008. States to be reviewed, in this order: Botswana, Bahamas, Burundi, Luxembourg, Barbados, Montenegro, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Liechtenstein, Serbia, Turkmenistan, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Colombia, Uzbekistan, and Tuvalu.

The remainder of the first 192 reviews will take until 2011.

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