Review

In compliance with the mandate entrusted to it by the General Assembly, the Council decided on 30 June 2006 to establish the Working Group on the implementation of operative paragraph 6 of General Assembly resolution 60/251 (decision 1/104) to formulate concrete recommendations on the issue of reviewing, and when necessary, improving and rationalizing all mandates, mechanisms, functions and responsibilities of the former Commission on Human Rights, including the 1503 procedure.

The Working Group held three formal open-ended sessions from 13 to 24 November 2006, 5 to 16 February 2007 and 10 to 27 April 2007. The segment on the complaint procedure was chaired by the Permanent Representative of Switzerland, who was appointed by the President of the Council to facilitate the consultations on this mechanism. Discussions in the Working Group and various rounds of informal consultations were conducted on the basis of an initial and subsequently revised framework for discussions prepared by the Facilitator. Following the last session of the Working Group, a final proposal (A/HRC/5/15) was submitted by the Facilitator to the President, taking into account to the greatest extent possible, the positions expressed during several months of consultations, with a view to facilitating the drafting of the section on the Complaint Procedure of a final document on institution building of the Council to be adopted in June 2007.

Summaries of the discussions held in the Working Group on the Complaint Procedure are contained in documents A/HRC/3/CRP.3, A/HRC/4/CRP.6 and A/HRC/5/CRP.6.

ECOSOC resolution 1503 (XLVIII) of 27 May 1970, as revised by resolution 2000/3 of 19 June 2000, served as a working basis for the new complaint procedure.

Five years after its establishment, the Human Rights Council had successfully completed a review of its work and functioning in 2011. This review process did not introduce any change in the working methods and scope of the Human Rights Council complaint procedure.