UN human rights commissioner urges Arab delegates to promote rights accords

The ranking United Nations human rights advocate today urged Arab leaders to pursue ratifications of UN human rights treaties, strengthen national rights protection systems and work toward ratification of an accord banning discrimination against women.

“I should like to encourage you to stimulate ratifications of United Nations human rights treaties and to help in the preparation of reports and in the process of following up on their implementation,” Bertrand Ramcharan, the Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the opening meeting of the Arab Commission on Human Rights in Cairo today.

Mr. Ramcharan also said he was making a “special appeal” to the Arab delegates to work on women’s’ rights.

“The human rights of women require special attention. This is a matter of fundamental justice. It is therefore particularly important that every State ratify the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and work faithfully to implement it at home,” he said.

The Acting High Commissioner also encouraged the group to disseminate human rights norms and conventions widely in the Arabic language, and noted that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan “accorded high emphasis to each State developing and strengthening its national human rights protection system.”

Mr. Ramcharan said, “A national human rights protection system requires that a State update its constitution in the light of international human rights norms; that it brings its legislation in line with those norms; that its courts can have access to those norms; that there is human rights education; that there are specialized institutions, such as national human rights commissions; and that there is on-going attention to the plight of vulnerable parts of the population.”