OHCHR/HRC press conference 15 June 2020

Well, good afternoon once again.

Thank you so much for your indulgence and for joining us here both at the Palais de Narcion and online.

As I mentioned, this is a unique experience for us, a hybrid press conference.

We're very pleased to have with us the President of the Human Rights Council, Ambassador Elizabeth Teehee Fieselberger, on the occasion of the resumed 43rd regular session, which as you know, suspended, was suspended on the 13th of March.

The Ambassador has some opening remarks.

And of course, over to you.

We'll start with you in the room and then turn to our colleagues joining on Zoom.

So thank you very much, Ambassador, over to you.

Well.

Thank you very much to everybody for coming and welcome to this room as well as to all of you who are somewhere on the screen.

We have taken up slowly this morning was our work.

I hope you will spend this lockdown time well then yourselves and your family.

We're not touched by the by the infection.

That's very much what I hope.

I think most of the people I know here were fortunate in that as well.

You know that the corona crisis really did show that there are on the, on the one hand, human rights issues which came up very clearly with the pandemic, and then there were new human rights issues.

And we did spend this time for doing some work.

On the one hand, we had informal debate with the **** Commissioner, which was followed by more than 2000 people all over the world.

We had also an informal dialogue with some special procedure mandate holders, all of these special rapporteurs and other mandate hold to spend those last weeks to come out with press statements, with reports.

So they actually did look at the situation.

They were very active.

The work was being done, but it wasn't the normal kind of work.

We also had about 8 meetings of our Bureau and were very active these last two or three weeks, I'd say, in seeing how we can come back to make this council work.

After all, this is the main human rights institution for human rights issues at a moment when there are massive human rights problems of various kinds all over the world.

And it wasn't so easy to start working on the full respect of the health conditions so that we can be sure we can take the risk, we can ask delegations to come back and take up this work.

So this is what we have done this morning.

Everybody was agreeable to the modalities we had developed.

As you can see, we're wearing masks, there are less people in the room, we have to keep distance, we have to wash our hands and sanitise and there's a number of health measures like that.

We also had to change the way we work because we're not all sitting in that one meeting room.

Some delegations prefer to participate from the home offices, so we had to make technical arrangements to allow for that.

And I can tell you it's fairly complicated to do that in six languages, even though it seemed easy to do Zoom sessions, but that is that's not sufficient for us.

We need a more complex system and we have tested some of the features we developed this morning and it worked rather well.

What is probably new to you, or at least what is still a rather recent development, is that we got a request from the African Group to have an urgent debate in the follow up to what happened in America was George Floyd and the the whole tragedy which showed the problems of racism, of police violence and the follow up to that.

So this is going to be the 5th urgent debate.

The Human Rights Council has overheld the first four were on on two on Syria, one on eastern Kota and one on what was the first one flotilla, The flotilla issue?

Yeah, the flotilla issue.

Anyway, these urgent debates are in a way like a special session within a regular session.

So the Council has agreed that we are going to have this debate on Wednesday, presumably in the afternoon, and it it will be a fully fledged debate on that subject.

It might come with a resolution.

That's something we don't know yet, but there you'll see how it all develops.

We think that is a moment to really discuss this issue, as you have seen with demonstrations all over Europe, including including here in Geneva.

So this is a topic which is not just about 1 country.

It goes well beyond that.

I think this is about as much as I can tell you at the moment.

So we've started again.

We hope to finish the 43rd session this week and we've made a proposal to then have one week's break and then start again with the 44th session.

But that still needs to be decided by the Council.

And having said that, I'm happy to answer your questions.

Thank you very much, Ambassador, for those opening remarks.

Now we'll start with questions in the room.

And yes, AFP, please.

Yes, hi.

Hello.

I have a question concerning the this 44 session.

I would like to know if there are some reticence from some countries to not to have this this session and if you could explain.

Thank you.

There was absolutely no discussion like that, no discussion at all.

Everybody thought it was a natural thing to do to have this debate right now.

Thank you.

And yes, maybe we can maybe take Gabby and then we'll go to Laurent.

Sorry.

Sorry, Rolando.

Sorry.

I I was not asking about the urgent debate.

I was asking for the 44th session.

Oh, sorry.

Pardon me, OK.

Well, we, we didn't really discuss that today.

We had an organisational meeting about the 44th session, which started on Friday and was finished this morning because we'd had technical problems on Friday.

But this was about the initiatives countries plan for the 44th session.

We did not discuss nor decide about the date yet.

OK, we'll have Gabby on the left here.

Thank you very much.

Madam President, I'm I'm Mexican journalist Gabriela Sotomayor.

My question is on today in the debate there was some countries that talk about special rapporteurs and that they are not compelling with the rules and things like that.

And my question is, do you have any complaint in written from any country regarding some special rapporteur in particular, if, if that is, if we can know a little bit more of that.

And then then I have another question on if there's going to be a discussion in the next session about the role of journalists in the context of COVID, that there's a lot of attacks against journalists that are covering a numbers and the the government dealing with this issue.

Thank you.

Thank you, Gabby.

OK, Ambassador.

Please call on on the special procedure mandate holders.

This is a kind of continuing debate.

First of all, those of the special rapporteurs who are responsible for a country, they have a more difficult life than those who are responsible for a topic because the countries in question, usually they're not overjoyed and they sometimes say, well, but the information wasn't gathered well, it's biassed.

They, they often contest what these special rapporteurs say.

So that's a general feature.

And then sometimes there are complaints about the lack of coordination.

We, we do have that, you know, there are like 70 individuals now who are doing these jobs for more than 50 mandates approximately.

It is true that they haven't always meticularly coordinated with each other and sometimes they came different mandate holders came in too short a time to the same country and so on.

But they are now working on that.

They have a coordinating committee which looks after these things.

And I think it works much better now.

And we don't get, we don't hear about many complaints and certainly not official ones.

I haven't got anything in writing about that as far as journalists are concerned.

Yes, as you say, this is this is a topic which has been mentioned by the **** Commissioner and by various mandate holders and and we're coming to that topic in the next session.

That's right, yeah.

OK.

Thank you very much.

Ambassador.

We're going to attempt to go on Zoom now.

We have a couple of questions coming in, one from Laurent Ciero, Swiss News agency.

If we can unmute Laurent and if we put your headphone, your earpiece on please.

OK, can you hear me OK?

Actually, we don't need the headphones there.

Very.

We hear you very well.

Go ahead, Laurel.

Some.

Sources tend to say that the discussion with the Swiss authorities ahead of the resumption were quite crucial as well in the decision by the Swiss authorities to allow the the gallery to be 300 people.

And that that some states put also pressure on the Swiss authorities to get to that decision in order for the the international Geneva to resume its work and, and, and especially the the Human Rights Council.

So could you tell us more about the this dialogue with the Swiss authorities?

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I have not conducted that dialogue.

I suppose it was conducted by UNOC.

I was only informed about the results.

I don't have any information either of states putting pressure on the Swiss authorities.

What I heard was rather that companies and hotels and restaurants and that kind of institutions were putting pressure on the Swiss authorities, as far as I know.

Thank you, Ambassador.

OK, let's take another question from on Zoom.

Lisa Schlein, VOA.

You're unmuted.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

I'm learning how to unmute myself.

This is like Howard.

Hello, I have a few questions I'd like to ask you regarding the version.

Today on Wednesday afternoon it begins at 3:00.

First of all, I'm wondering how long it will last.

Will you, you have a list of speakers who who will be presenting various issues regarding racism around the world, in the United States and so forth.

And here do you know whether there might be any people, perhaps from the Floyd family or others who are very involved of course, in this tragic event, who might speak by video conference to to the to the council?

And then I think will there be resolution at at the outcome of this learning will there?

Be some kind of a finish to this.

Thank you, Lisa.

Please.

Well, thank you very much.

Most of these questions I can't really answer.

We're not even sure it starts at 3:00, but that's that's what we are proposing at the moment.

That might still be changed a little bit then.

We don't know how long it'll last because every delegation has a right to speak and it is impossible at the moment to know how many delegations will actually request the floor.

We do not have a speakers list yet.

Of course, we'll have one on on Wednesday.

I am not involved in the details of the planning for that session.

That's done by the African group, as you can imagine.

I do not know whether they are inviting anybody from the Floyd family or any other family.

We think that they are preparing a resolution, but I haven't seen a text yet.

Maybe just a housekeeping note, of course.

I will of course keep you informed of any developments.

Or if, for example, if the time of the debate shifts, I'll let you know as well as any draught resolution which is tabled.

We'll certainly share that with you as well as the lists of speakers as they develop.

OK, We'll go to ARD in the back, please.

Way in the back of the room, please.

Thank you.

No, no.

OK, very good.

Further questions.

OK, Lisa, go ahead, please.

This is the special.

Session Urgent debate.

Could you talk?

A little bit about the hours I didn't talk.

Yeah, that I got.

I got three.

That one are in Syria.

Or 2223 actually talk a little.

Bit more about previous special.

Sessions.

The eastern route is also Syria.

Whether they have resolutions like to get a sense.

They do what?

Happened in the past and.

Whether a similar?

Pattern might be followed in the upcoming debate.

Thank you.

Well, as I said, there was one.

Yeah, there was one.

The the first of those special debates was on the flotilla incident.

Then there were two in Syria and one on Eastern Ghouta.

I must say I wasn't here myself except for the very last one, so I don't know the details and the request came on Friday night so we didn't have very much time to do any research yet.

I just want to point out that there is a difference between special sessions and urgent debates.

Special sessions are done between sessions.

When the the next special session, when the next regular session is too far away and some delegation thinks that there is an urgent need to discuss something, In that case that delegation needs to get 16 signatures, 16 states to support the idea of having an urgent debate and such.

Sorry, I have a special session and such special sessions have taken place once in a while.

Actually, there were no more numerous than the urgent debates.

Urgent debates are done when there is a regular session on and a Member State or more than one thing that there is an additional subject which is urgent and should be dealt with.

The four previous urgent debates did result in a resolution, but I have not done much more homework about how exactly they went.

Maybe Hollanda knows more.

I'd have to check.

I mean, indeed they all culminated.

The previous four urgent debates did culminate.

The earliest one was in 2010.

That was the flotilla incident and the others scattered over the last few years, They all did culminate with the resolution.

I, I can't recall all the details, but I could certainly look into that.

All the resolutions are also available online.

So, but I'd happy to point you to those if if you're interested, Lisa and other colleagues, maybe we can turn if no questions online for the moment.

I think, Gabriel, you had another question, please, Gabriella.

Thank you very much.

Do you expect that USA will be in in the room on the during the general debate?

And if you encourage them to be there during the debate, normally they don't come to meetings.

I didn't encourage them to do anything and I suppose they will be following via void broadcast that that would be more, that would be more in line with what they have been doing recently.

I I think that some African delegations have made it quite clear that this is not a debate about the United States only, this is about the generalised phenomenon in many countries.

Thank you.

Ambassador.

Do we have further questions?

There is a question from Nick of New York Times on Zoom.

If we can unmute Nick, please.

Actually, yes, we can hear you.

Nice.

I was just curious in this morning to discussion from the Council to.

Hear comments from China.

On behalf of the like minded people saying that the Bureau is actually of.

A lack of transparency.

In.

The procedure for discussions.

I'm just wondering what have you done that you're wondering in?

What ways you've been?

Unwriting.

Ourselves in mobile proceeds.

Thank you.

Well, there was a group of countries, all of them in the like minded group, who thought it was too early to start the work of the Council again.

Some of them didn't really have a suggestion when to start it again.

They were afraid that there might be a second or a third wave of the corona infection.

But as I say, that was a small group of countries.

There was quite a group of countries who felt that they had trust in what the Swiss authorities were doing and in what unit was preparing.

They thought the conditions were right to take up the work again and that there actually was quite a lot to do.

So we had diverging opinions and we tried to do everything to meet the health concerns and the security concerns.

So from the first proposal for reopening the meeting we made about 3 weeks ago, we've come a long way in defining a number of new measures, all of which are meant to really take care of all the health concerns people may have, including by allowing delegations who do not wish to come in person to participate online.

So we've really devised a whole new way of working.

We have also conducted consultations twice via a Zoom meeting where all delegations had the possibility to voice their concerns but also their ideas, many of which we have taken up.

And we have spent the secretariat, my collaborators and myself endless hours in discussing with all delegations.

I'm a bit disappointed that somebody is saying we are not transparent because we were really super transparent.

We had this discussion, everybody could follow them.

We talked with everybody.

I understand that people are not always happy if they do not get 100% of what they requested.

Some countries would would have liked to postpone this meeting, but as I said, we had to find a compromise, and the compromise consists of, on the one hand, providing all kinds of security measures.

And virtual participation and on the other hand, starting work now again because many countries feel that that is necessary.

And another compromise we made is that we are now offering next week as a break and to start the 44th session at the earliest, one week later than originally planned.

We think this is a fairly good compromise.

And as you have seen, there was no further objection in the meeting this morning.

Everybody agreed that we could continue our work and I think it was quite satisfactory.

The conditions worked out well.

I haven't had any complaints after we concluded the session.

So I hope that now everybody is happy.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Catherine on the right, please.

Good, good afternoon.

My question is related the 44th and related to the 44th session, have you found any format that would allow civil society to to be involved in exchanges as it's usually is not only having a delivering statements through Zoom?

Thank you.

Well, when we have virtual meetings and we have them for example with panels, is it for panels we are allowing, we will allow NGOs also to participate online.

But it's, it's, it's very difficult to do it 100% for all the debates.

So we have to ask for some understanding.

We're trying to offer the best possible conditions and to bend over backwards to take account of people's concerns and of people's ideas.

We cannot provide conditions which are 100% ideal under depression conditions, so but we'll try to do our best.

Follow up.

Go ahead, Catherine.

My follow up is regarding this very special situation.

So do you think that you are going to take that format, hybrid format still a vaccine or treatments are found?

Well, we don't really know.

It's very difficult to predict this at the moment because we're in the hands of the council.

It's, it's not the Bureau myself who can decide any such thing.

That's for the council to decide.

The modalities which we proposed for this morning were adopted by the council before we actually went ahead with the meeting.

And we, we really have to see I'm, I'm not a prophet, just just see how the, how the infection figures develop and how soon we get a vaccine.

That's very hard to predict at the moment.

Thank you, Ambassador.

We have maybe we can go back to Lisa, we have a few more minutes I think if that's OK.

Lisa, again on Zoom over to you please.

Thank you.

Yes, sorry, I'm eating the same horse.

I'd like to know what is the importance of interrupting a regular session in order to have an urgent debate.

I mean to interrupt that, what is the importance of holding this urgent debate?

And then what you said it was interesting that this was not a focus just on the United States.

So then what other issues are likely to come up, that is our issues of systemic racism and other African countries or elsewhere in the world likely to be debated at this at this session.

And then lastly, will members of the will non governmental organisations be speaking or is this only open to the regular to the delegations to the UN?

The SDLU, for instance, has played very big role in an e-mail to the letter that finally was sent to you from the.

Thank you.

Thank you please.

Well, why have an urgent debate?

I, I think that the African countries, that's the way I understand it.

They thought that the situation was such and also the demonstrations and the, the intensity of the public debate was such that you shouldn't just have a regular Human Rights Council session and you should really put some focus on that topic.

I think that was their thinking.

They, they want to show a sign that that that is being done.

They think this is one of the core jobs of what the Human Rights Council has to do.

When I said it's not against the United States, I mean, there is complaints about a lot of racism in many countries of this world, of course, in Europe, but not only you find it all over the world.

And if you listen to what people have to say, I think they will just come up with statements on describing different situations in different countries.

But again, I'm not the prophet.

I'm I'm just guessing and NGOs will be able to participate, yes?

Indeed think OK, maybe just the last question from Anyas.

Yes, sorry, question of Lisa makes me think about that.

Just to understand about the logistic because it was they were supposed to have this item 9 about the racism also on Tuesday afternoon I think and maybe Wednesday.

So our all these debate are going to happen with urgent debate.

Will we have only one or two separate things if you could explain?

Well, the point of the urgent debate is to have something separate, something to really attract your attention to a particular current event and the discussion about it.

So yes, there will be item 9, which is about the Durban programme of work and declaration that we have every time.

That's a standard point on the agenda.

I suspect that since we're going to have both an urgent debate and the regular item 9 debate, the regular item 9 debate will be rather shorter and, and maybe, yeah, delegations will prefer to make their statements under the urgent debate.

But, but again, I think that the point is to say this is special.

This is an addition to the regular agenda which we have each time with these 10 items.

I think on that note, we'd like to thank you for joining us here and on Zoom and especially to the Ambassador for joining us.

Busy week ahead and we will certainly keep you informed of all developments throughout.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Bye bye.

Thank.

You.