GENEVA (AN) — Eighty percent of the U.N.'s member nations and regional groups aren't fulfilling obligations to turn over information about their human rights record – and half those owe reports more 10 years overdue.
In a global update, the head of the United Nations human rights office emphasized the need for more cooperation from all 193 member nations. Half of those host field offices for U.N. human rights personnel.
Volker Türk said only 37 nations or regional organizations are up to date with all their reporting requirements to international treaty bodies.
The rest are behind on 601 reports; 78 nations are more than a decade late. The treaty body that gets the worst cooperation is the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
There's also a three-year backlog of committee work including more than 1,800 people awaiting decisions on formal complaints, said Turk, who blamed that on both a lack of cooperation and financial resources.
"Poor cooperation leaves states adrift. Selective cooperation weakens that lifeline’s force," he told the opening of the 47-nation U.N. Human Rights Council's 53rd session on Monday that lasts almost a month. "International cooperation is crucial, so that we can advance human rights."
Fear of reprisals
Turk, a U.N. career diplomat from Austria, expressed alarm over attacks on people who cooperate with his Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, or OHCHR.
He said the U.N. has collected information on more than 700 recent cases or incidents of reprisals in 77 nations that contribute to a "chilling effect" on communities.
"When intimidation and repression of civil society is so intense that people simply refrain from taking the risk of cooperating with international bodies, we will receive no reports of reprisals – because nobody dares to interact with us," he said. "I am profoundly concerned about this strangulation of civil society in several countries."
Turk, however, said his office has expanded to include field offices in 95 countries over the past three decades, reflecting "widespread recognition that cooperating with us to advance human rights has immense practical benefits."
OHCHR wants a field office in all nations, he said, and is focused now on setting ones up in China and India and expanding its presence in Brazil, the Caribbean region, Central Asia, Ecuador, Kenya, Mozambique and the United States.
