COMMITTEE ON ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION OPENS FIFTY-FOURTH SESSION

HR/CERD/99/2
1 March 1999


Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Addresses Committee


The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination this morning opened its fifty-fourth session by adopting its agenda and programme of work.

The Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Bertie Ramcharan, said that the United Nations had committed itself to a world of equality and non-discrimination. The principle of non-discrimination pervaded the Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he added.

Mr. Ramcharan told the Committee members that Kazakhstan, Lithuania and South Africa had acceded to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, bringing the number of States parties to the treaty to 153. In addition, Malta and South Africa had made the declaration under article 14 of the Convention, on the consideration of communications from individuals, bringing the number of States parties which had done so to 27.

In an exchange of views with the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, some experts said that more attention had to be drawn to wide-spread discrimination against some groups of people in many parts of the world. The experts stressed that further preventive measures had to be implemented to avert any racial discrimination which was still practised worldwide.

In the course of its three-week session, the Committee will consider reports submitted to it by Austria, Costa Rica, Finland, Italy, Lesotho, Mongolia, Peru, Portugal, the Republic of Korea, the Syrian Arab Republic and Kuwait.


The Committee will also review the implementation of the Convention in Bangladesh, whose periodic reports have been deemed excessively overdue, and Bahrain, Congo and Slovenia, whose initial reports are seriously overdue. Under its early warning and urgent action procedures, the Committee was also scheduled to consider the situation in Australia, the Czech Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

In addition, the Committee’s 18 independent human rights experts will consider, in closed session, communications from individuals claiming to be victims of racial discrimination from the 27 States parties which have recognized the competence of the Committee to accept such claims.

When the Committee reconvenes at 3 p.m., it will start its consideration of the report submitted by the Government of Austria on how that country complies with the provisions of the Convention. For further information, please refer to the background release HR/CERD/99/1 of 25 February.

Statement by the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights

BERTIE RAMCHARAN, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that when the twentieth century began, the principle of non-discrimination was far removed from either international law or practice. During the drafting of the Covenant of the League of Nations, a proposal to include an article against racial discrimination was discarded which proved a disastrous blunder. Racial prejudice had caused terrible loss of life and human suffering during the second world war.

The United Nations had committed itself to a world of equality and non-discrimination, Mr. Ramcharan went on to state. The principle of non-discrimination pervaded the Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Mr. Ramcharan said that the twentieth century would end by bequeathing to the coming century, the start of a new millennium, an impressive legal framework of equality and non-discrimination and a distressing range of problems. In addition, the twentieth century was ending with wars and conflicts rooted in prejudice and intolerance. It was almost as if reality were defying the principles and the legal framework.

The Deputy High Commissioner stressed that the preventive approach of the Committee was a breakthrough. The challenge on the eve of a new century was to take preventive strategies to the national level: every State party should be able to show and to explain to the Committee the preventive strategies it had in place in its constitutional structure, its legislation, its judicial system, its executive branch and in the institutions it had established to provide special protection to those at risk.

In conclusion, Mr. Ramcharan told the members that Kazakhstan, Lithuania and South Africa had acceded to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, bringing the number of States parties to the treaty to 153. In addition, Malta and South Africa had made the declaration under article 14 of the Convention, on the consideration of communications from individuals, bringing the number of States parties which had done so to 27.