Ad Hoc Committee on Complementary Standards Statement 1 (under Item 2 – before the adoption of POW)
Thank you, Mr Chairman.
I have the honour to speak on behalf of the cross-regional group on Complementary Standards, namely, the Delegations of Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Republic of Korea and Switzerland.
I would like to begin by saying that our Group intends to engage constructively during the session of the Ad Hoc Committee on Complementary Standards. It is our hope that we will, under your guidance, contribute to the work of the Ad Hoc Committee in a positive manner.
In this regard, we would like to emphasize that our Group has contributed to the work of this Ad Hoc Committee by submitting two joint documents that explain our ideas and suggestions on the way to address this issue.
Our Group has repeatedly expressed our firm belief that consensus should be the basis of our work, as this will reinforce the legitimacy of our decisions and also the possible measures to be taken.
With that in mind, our Group would like to take this opportunity to make a proposal regarding the programme of work.
The POW in front of us shows that we will immediately commence our discussion on the compilation document that you, Mr. Chair, have prepared in keeping with the Roadmap that we consensually adopted last December. We thank you for your document which could be one of the bases for discussion at a later stage in this Working Group.
The POW as it stands now seems to recognize that there are gaps in each of these topics as we directly jump into discussion on “proposals on the format and nature of possible complementary standards to be elaborated.” Therefore, we would like to suggest that such references be deleted so as to allow us to first discuss the best way to move forward.
We would like to suggest that we take the following steps in order to make the discussion more meaningful. First, we should give due consideration to the contributions put forward by experts. We believe the views of experts, including those reports submitted by CERD and five experts on complementary standards are indispensable component for our discussion. We also believe it will be useful to have representatives of the Human Rights Committee who are currently holding the session in Geneva when we have relevant discussions.
Our Group strongly believes that it will be most appropriate to start our work by discussing the principles and the methods for moving forward. Our Group believes that the discussion on the identification of possible gaps in various themes that are suggested by delegations should come before the consideration of any other issues.
We would like to reiterate our commitment to engage in discussions and underscore that future identification of gaps of both procedural and susbstantive nature as well as the way to deal with them must be done by consensus.
Thank you very much, Mr Chairperson.
