Statement on Agenda Item 2 and 3: Report of the Intergovernmental Working Group on the Right to Development and General Debate on HC/SG Thematic Reports, September 15, 2014 Statement on Agenda Item 2 and 3: Report of the Intergovernmental Working Group on the Right to Deve..

Statement on Agenda Item 2 and 3: Report of the Intergovernmental Working Group on the Right to Development and General Debate on HC/SG Thematic Reports, September 15, 2014

PERMANENT MISSION OF INDIA TO THE UN, GENEVA

HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL

27TH SESSION (8-26 Sept 2014)

Agenda Item 2&3:

Report of the Intergovernmental Working Group on the Right to Development

General Debate on HC/SG Thematic Reports

(15 September 2014)

Statement by India

Mr. President,

1. We welcome the Chairperson-Rapporteur of the Working Group (WG) on the Right to Development and thank her for the presentation of the report on the 15th session of the Working Group.

 

2. India attaches highest priority to the Right to Development, a right that has been reaffirmed by the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action as well as by this Council as a universal, inalienable and an integral part of fundamental rights. We strongly believe that the Right to Development should be central to the post-2015 development agenda.

 

3. We welcome the completion of the first reading of the draft criteria and corresponding operational sub-criteria. However, we are seriously concerned at the slow pace of progress in the Working Group. We call on all Member States to renew their commitment and accelerate efforts for the early implementation of the right to development. In this regard, the new framework to be presented by the Chairperson-Rapporteur should not only aim at improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the Working Group but also provide a new roadmap for the early completion of its mandate. We believe the aim of elaborating criteria and operational sub-criteria should be towards setting general standards for establishing and sustaining a conducive environment at both national and international levels for the realization of the Right to Development. The focus should be on “development as a right” rather than “human rights as development” and attempts to introduce measurability should be desisted.

 

Mr. President,

4. We also thank the Deputy High Commissioner for the presentation of the various reports on a variety of issues under agenda items 2&3. We would like to confine our remarks to the High Commissioner’s Report on the composition of the staff of OHCHR that follows from the Council resolution 22/2.

 

5. We appreciate the efforts of the High Commissioner to improve geographical diversity in OHCHR and are encouraged to note that this issue remains one of the High Commissioner’s priorities. We also take positive note of improvements in the gender balance of the OHCHR.  Nevertheless, Mr. President our concerns expressed last year on the issue remain and we would like to reiterate them with some additional observations.

 

(i) We regret to note that in the table in Page 4, there has been a decline in representation from Africa, Asia and Latin America while there has been a substantial increase in representation from Eastern Europe and the Western Europe and others. We are particularly concerned at the 1.7% decline in representation from Asia while that of the Western Europe and others has increased by that same degree.

 

(ii) The above only vindicates the importance of implementing Recommendation 8 of the JIU report 2003/6 that was reiterated in subsequent JIU reports on the issue.  We note that the OHCHR still does not have any specific targets and deadlines to reduce the imbalance in geographical distribution of staff. We hope the new High Commissioner will pay due attention to this and look forward to hearing his plans to formulate specific targets and deadlines on this issue.

 

(iii) We would request clarification on how of the countries under Western Europe and other region that represents 49% of the OHCHR staff, several of them figure in the list of underrepresented. Indeed, this indicates existence of a significant intra-regional imbalance.

 

(iv) Concerning the table in Annex I, while it provides the breakdown of staff by nationality, grade and sex, it covers both regular budget posts subject to geographical distribution and extra-budgetary posts not covered by geographical distribution.  This is confusing especially given that in paragraph 11 the report mentions that as of December 2013, there were 503 regular staff members in the professional category. We would appreciate a clarification on this and request that future reports contain a separate table for both regular budget posts and extra-budgetary posts.

 

(v) The Report omits to discuss the issue of the highly skewed trend in the recruitment of Associate Experts or Junior Professional Officers (JPOs). We would, therefore, request the High Commissioner to share information on how he plans to address this issue;

 

(vi) We would also be interested in the breakup of the various categories of staff given in paragraph 9 of the report as opposed to aggregate information as presented in annex 11.

 

(vii) We would like the OHCHR to share information on the geographical composition of the 2010 National Competitive recruitment exam and share the results of the new Young Professionals Programme exam to be held in 2014 and its impact on the composition of staff in the OHCR in future reports.

 

I thank you, Mr. President.