HRC Press conference Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger 9 September 2020

[Other language spoken]

I think maybe, ladies and gentlemen, I think we can start the press conference just now, if ever it's the President.

[Other language spoken]

So maybe I can just briefly welcome you to this virtual press conference.

This is a fully virtual press conference and for the reasons mentioned I I cannot be at the Palais or next to the President because I am in quarantine.

So thank you for your indulgence on on us hosting this fully virtual press conference this morning with the President.

We keep up with the tradition of holding these pre session briefings with you, which are indeed important for the President to engage.

The President will deliver opening remarks momentarily before she does so.

I just wanted to draw your attention to the e-mail I sent you roughly 30 minutes ago which contains a host of the usual background documents.

That is the programme of work for the session, which, as I always remind you, is a live document which will certainly undergo changes as as the session progresses.

There is the A-Z document, that is the short booklet which outlines of various themes and country situations to be addressed through the prescribed agenda items or mandates.

Rather, a background press release, English in French, which you received yesterday by e-mail.

And lastly, a list of the draught resolutions which have been announced at a organisational meeting held the week before last.

So these were announced in a public meeting, so we could share those with you.

Of course, that's not all inclusive.

We do expect additional resolutions to be tabled during the session.

So without further ado, I hand over to Ambassador TT Fieselberger for her remarks and then to you for your questions.

[Other language spoken]

Good morning to all of you.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you for being with us and moderating this from your quarantine.

Good morning to all of you.

[Other language spoken]

You didn't get in touch with Corona and you have got a break from our busy schedules here because as I can see, we're in for quite a busy autumn again.

You know that the United Nations are now challenged actually in a double way, and in particular those who help us set up the Human Rights Council.

On the one hand, we still have the COVID pandemic situation has been moving a little bit up and down in Switzerland over the months.

But we certainly cannot give up the measures we have taken before the summer, the modalities of the Council.

We're going to propose the same modalities at the first day of the Council as we did in June.

That is to say that we have so-called hybrid meetings where we allow only one person for delegation to sit in the room.

Everybody else has to follow from their Home Office.

We so we have social distancing, we're wearing masks, you're going to see that on the screen.

So all these measures are upheld.

In addition to that, we were informed by the **** Commissioner over the summer that there is a serious financial, that is to say liquidity crisis, which means that even the money which has been granted by the General Assembly last year for this year actually didn't materialise because the countries didn't pay.

Many countries didn't pay iron delay and we therefore have to take a number of measures to to see how we can keep going without all the money that would be needed to do all the activities that were planned.

In spite of this, this is going to be a very busy session.

I think you have seen that it is scheduled from the 14th of September to the 6th of October.

So for the first time, we're going beyond the three weeks which we usually had in September.

We have three weeks of meeting plus two days of voting.

This is because there is an increase in the agenda practically all the time because almost each new session adopts new mandates and there are very few mandates which are being discontinued.

So the result of all this is that this time we're going to hear from 70 independent human rights experts who will discuss 20 different topics as well as present the situation in a dozen countries, dozen country situation.

Plus we have the country visit reports of the special procedure mandate holders.

This will include presentations by each of the 8 active investigative bodies.

This is how we have so many people, because each of these investigative bodies have three persons.

They will for the first time all meet in one session.

So as you see, this is a very, very dense programme.

The country will also adopt the UPR outcomes of 12 countries.

These are the countries which already underwent their UPR in January, where the adoption of outcomes had to be postponed from May to November because of the COVID crisis.

And this is what we're going to do now, all the 14 countries of January except for Spain and Kuwait who already had their adoptions in June because this is the way they wish to handle things.

And now I would like to add that in consistent with our approach during the resumed session, we will mostly have the experts in remote participation.

There is only a handful of them or maybe even less than a handful who will be physically present here in Geneva.

I can inform you in addition.

And that's going to be interesting for you.

I think that five out of the 8 investigative bodies will also hold press conferences to directly engage with all of you and give you the possibility of asking questions more precisely wherever you're most interested.

The first of these press conferences will be held this afternoon at 1:00 PM with the Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen, and there will be further press conferences next week on Syria, Venezuela, Burundi and South Sudan.

Don't want to go too much into detail, but let me just say that we will hear reports and oral updates from the **** Commissioner on Myanmar, Nicaragua, Venezuela, the Ukraine, Yemen, Cambodia and Georgia.

The **** Commissioner will also provide an oral update on the preparations of her report on the excessive use of force by law enforcement officials against people of African descent.

You know, this is the follow up to the urgent debate we had in the summer following the George Floyd case.

We will hear three.

We will have 3 panel discussions.

The topics will be the right to development that will be focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic, the rights of indigenous peoples and the integration of gender perspective in our work as per the President's statement on the human rights implications of the COVID-19 pandemic.

You know, that's the one which the Council adopted by silent procedure last May during the lockdown.

The opening day of the session, we'll hear an oral update by the **** Commissioner on this topic followed by an enhanced discussion as required by the presidential statement was the participation of WHO and ILO.

So this is a follow up.

Additionally, on the 25th of September we will hear the presentation of the report by the Secretary General on reprisals against those who Co operate with the Human Rights Council and other United Nations human rights mechanisms.

This presentation will be followed by an interactive dialogue.

And this is indeed very important day to pronounce our vigilance on against these abhorrent acts and to really make sure that the Human Rights Council can do go on doing its work as it should be doing, which is to open the floor for those who have to report on human rights violations around the world in all safety.

Because very often that information is required for the work to improve the human rights situation.

So as you can see, there's a lot to do.

The Council really tries to do as best it can in spite of all the challenges that we are having health wise, finance wise, etcetera.

I think it's important that all stakeholders really are in touch.

So we try to have a constructive engagement not only with the NGO community, which again is difficult in times of COVID, but also with all of you, the press.

We know that very often the information the council gets is somehow via the media.

So in a way you're important collaborators of ours.

And This is why I'm very, very glad to see that you keep up your interest in spite of the difficult conditions.

You will follow the session.

If you have any further questions, please let us know anytime.

It is a bit difficult with modern technologies on the one hand, but on the other hand, sometimes modern technology makes things easier.

In particular, for those of you who cannot come to Geneva right now, I would stop here, but I'm very happy to answer any questions you might have.

And I understand that the Secretariat are equally online, not in the room where I'm sitting, but in another room, so they can answer questions that you might have when it comes to logistics and things like that.

Thank you very much, Rolando.

I hand back the floor to you now.

Thank you Ambassador and quite a busy programme indeed as you've just heard.

Now I understand some of you are not able to open up the programme of work, so it just if, if that is the case for the e-mail I sent you, just please feel free to go to the link at the bottom of that e-mail which drives you to the dedicated page for the session.

Therein you'll find all the documents including the programme of work.

So apologies if if some of you can't open it, but it should work.

In any case, do consult those documents.

Now over to you for your questions.

[Other language spoken]

Let me just open up the gallery to see.

[Other language spoken]

So if we can start with Catherine Fiancan, if we could unmute Catherine for the first question.

[Other language spoken]

Good morning, Madam Ambassador, My question is related to the financial issue, so could you please elaborate a little bit more about the money that did not matter realise and how much it will affect the work of the Council?

[Other language spoken]

You need to unmute yourself.

[Other language spoken]

Well, the **** Commissioner sent a letter to delegations with an annex which gives the details of all the activities which the Council cannot carry out 100% this year because of a lack of liquidity.

Now this is an ongoing negotiation.

Now what we're going to do with this?

In the end of the day, the council will have to take a formal decision when it takes the all the other votes as well on how to proceed with regard to these activities.

In most cases, what the **** Commissioner and her staff propose is to postpone these activities to the coming year.

But the UN budget being a yearly budget, it means that if the money didn't come in this year, it will not automatically come in next year.

So we cannot just postpone it.

Without further ado, we have to make sure that the budget is re approved in New York and this is what we're going to prepare.

There will, it seems, now be some kind of decision by the council to list those activities which we're going to postpone or propose to postpone to the next year.

And the hope that New York will grant the money necessary.

And a number of other activities will maybe be carried out in a different way, things like instead of having a physical meeting, having a virtual meeting, having a shorter report than originally planned or things like that.

So basically for each of these activities, the council will have to decide on the way to proceed.

And this is a negotiation I think, which will have to lead in parallel to the session.

And in particular this discussion will be LED between the Co sponsors of the various activities and OHCHR because they are best placed to discuss how to sort out the problem.

[Other language spoken]

So you mentioned that the the session.

Is going to be.

Busy and and there seems to be huge activity around the Belarus right now.

So I was wondering whether you have already formally received a request for an urgent debate and whether you could address that with the Bureau and and set up a date for that.

[Other language spoken]

So far I haven't received anything.

I am of course aware that some people are discussing things.

[Other language spoken]

If there were a request, for example, for an urgent debate, we would proceed exactly as we did in the summer when we got the request for an urgent debate on on racism and police violence and so on.

So we would first share this request with the Bureau.

The Bureau would then in all likelihood, proposed to the council to have such a debate if necessary.

The one would count whether there are enough voters for that.

Maybe that isn't necessary.

Understand it wasn't necessary so.

But all this is purely speculative.

We haven't heard anything from anybody yet.

[Other language spoken]

And should should that be the case, of course, Laurent and colleagues, we would inform you immediately.

OK, we have a question from and yes, from Argens France Press and yes, please.

[Other language spoken]

Hello everybody.

[Other language spoken]

I have a question and just a very quick follow up about the question asked by Kathleen about the virtual.

[Other language spoken]

To know if a virtual meeting is more expensive or less expensive than usual meeting like.

Before and then my my.

Question, I don't know if you have heard this morning some.

Three hundreds NGOs have.

Called the UN to address the issue of human rights violations in China and they're asking UN to yes, to address this issue eventually to do a special session or to do something.

And I wanted to to know if there is something already scheduled on the agenda, not a special session, but something else on the agenda on this issue and or if you have heard anything.

[Other language spoken]

And yes, go ahead, Ambassador.

Well, thank you very much.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much.

First of all, on on what is more expensive of actual meeting or a physical meeting?

I do not know about press briefings, but maybe Rolando could say a word about that if he knows.

What I know is that when it comes to meetings, purely remote meetings are a lot more expensive than normal meetings because in addition to the, there would be a different software that would be one of three different platforms that the UN has made a contract with that would have to be used.

And these platforms need a certain amount of staff.

So you have to have a moderate and you have to have a technician.

So in addition to the interpreters whom we always have to pay, we'd also have to pay that staff, these people who operate the platform.

That is one of the reasons, but not the only one.

Why most that people who are organising meetings now are having hybrid meetings rather than purely remote meetings.

That is what we are doing in the Human Rights Council.

We have one person in in the room for delegation and very importantly we have the interpreters in the room and it's the same method that is being chosen by other organisations, like for example WHO as far as I know.

And there is another cost factor, which is that interpreters who are in the room, they work 3 hours per meeting.

If it were a purely remote session, they would only work 2 hours instead of three because they say that the sound quality is worse.

So that would mean that any meeting would actually have to have plus 50% time to take place.

Maybe Rolando can say a word about the briefings for the for the press, because I'm not so sure about that.

Normai, you're putting me a little bit on the spot, but this is actually quite, it's a good question.

Thank you for posing that.

And yes, I, I would need to get back to you on that.

I mean there is also the factor of of flying people in to who would normally be here for experts.

So the there is a cost saving there in terms of the actual sessions.

But I think this is a question which we we should definitely look into.

And maybe what I can do is ask for some sort of even an estimate to give you sort of approximations on, on both scenarios.

I really don't have the answer in terms of press conferences.

Maybe that's that's a question better pointed to Eunice as they host several of these.

But we will certainly get back to you quickly on that.

On the on, on the other question, Rolando, if I may, I haven't seen the letter you mention, but you, you know, various problems in the context of China have already been discussed in previous sessions.

So far we have not got any formal request from any member state and as you know, the NGO community cannot really make a request for a special session or an urgent debate or anything like that.

So we'd we'd have to see whether this comes from any state.

This is, these are the rules of the game.

But I suppose there are opportunities to, to raise the subject matter one way or another.

But this is up to delegations and I am not a prophet.

I am only the president who will listen to what delegations have to say.

[Other language spoken]

OK, we have a question from Peter Kenny from Andalou.

[Other language spoken]

To the money issue.

When we've asked the UN questions about the.

Financing of operations here.

They've said that it's kind of standard that countries pay like.

Now you have mentioned.

That that your work has been restricted in some sort of ways is this.

[Other language spoken]

Different to a normal year with the human.

Rights Council and DO.

You think the fact that P5 countries?

Are increasingly being mentioned.

In the Human Rights Council might.

Be affecting your overall.

Financing.

[Other language spoken]

Sorry.

Thank you very much.

It is indeed a very different year.

I mean, first of all, there's the big COVID topic, as you know, which changes everything.

But in terms of finance, it seems to be a particularly serious crisis.

I am not an expert for that, but I have had experts explain and I hope I'm right when I try to render what I understood.

And that is that each year there is the budgetary cycle of the United Nations.

You know, there's this committee in New York and they, they accept certain things and then they make the budget.

And that budget is then given to States and the understanding that each state should pay their part, their percentages, how, how many percent of that budget needs to be paid by which state, depending on their size and their prosperity and other things.

There is a, there is a, there is a we know exactly which state has to pay how many percent.

Now it just happens that this year, unfortunately, some of the biggest states have either not paid or are in delay.

Some are even in delay over various years.

Some of them just make sure that they are not too much in delay to lose their voting rights, which can happen to you if you don't pay for various years.

So this has always been the case to a certain extent, but it seems to be very much the case this year more than ever before.

This is what I understood and your question on the P5.

I'm not an expert, but I understand that among the countries which haven't paid, they're also P5 countries.

[Other language spoken]

I should just emphasise, as I've done in the past, the Council itself has doesn't have its own specific budget.

It draws funds from the regular budget for conference servicing etcetera.

That just needs to be understood.

So it doesn't have its own exclusive budget.

If we can move to the next question, Catherine, you have another question or perhaps a follow up.

Catherine, go ahead.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you, Rolando.

Madam Ambassador, this is a follow up about what you just mentioned.

Would it be possible to be a bit more precise about the countries?

You said some big countries, so could you give us some names?

And the second thing is that regarding the cost of virtual events and physical events in you spoke about the fact that contract contracts had been signed with platform providers.

So could you be elaborate also a little bit on that one, how much I suppose it's the UN or that signed those contracts.

So could you be more precise on that?

And also could you articulate figures how much money is missing in order to work properly?

And also if you could mention some activities that will be affected due to the lack of money?

Are there important activities like Technical Support to certain countries?

[Other language spoken]

I'm sorry for this very wide list of questions.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much.

But I think I have to try to hand on all three questions to people who know more than I do.

I, I don't know whether Rolando, any of the colleagues from the Secretariat would say more about which countries haven't paid.

They, they would probably hesitate because this is being handled in New York and it's, it's not easy to really have the last and most updated information on all of that.

Same thing on the, on the three platforms.

These contracts were concluded in New York.

One of the platforms is in Taprofine.

I forget the name of the two others, but maybe maybe some of my colleagues from the UN knows.

And on the question which activities are going to be affected by the liquidity crisis, I would hesitate to give you an answer today because this needs to be decided by the Council.

The Council now has a list of activities where the **** Commissioner says we have to see what we do with them.

We don't have a decision on that yet.

Once that decision is taken, I'm happy to share it with you, but I think it's premature at the moment.

And I'm turning to Rolando, maybe other colleagues from UN who might be in a position to give you a little bit more information about your first two questions.

[Other language spoken]

I, I actually have to defer to, well, I'll take note of these.

[Other language spoken]

Perhaps we should have had an accountant on the panel this morning.

There are lots of finance questions.

Indeed, the situation is very fluid.

So you know, it's, it's hard to pinpoint specifically at this stage what which projects would be compromised or not in terms of big the countries which haven't paid this again, I, I, I repeat, the council has, does not have its own specific budget.

So it's the countries which haven't been paying their arrears or not paying their contributions, which which we, the trickle down effect is that our services as a result of services rather to the council as a result are are compromised.

So I will need to consult with colleagues in our in our Budget Office and perhaps even the General Assembly affairs.

But let's let me get back to you on that.

And I apologise for not having an answer at this precise moment, I think.

Nick, do you have a question for us perhaps on the same subject?

[Other language spoken]

Yes, we can hear you loud and clear.

[Other language spoken]

Well, yes, it is like 2 questions, one on the same subject, which is bottom line.

Ambassador Funder, do you think the ability of the Council to fulfil its fundamental functions and role is being compromised by the constraints on, on on the financial side?

And if it's possible to quantify what the shortfall is in sort of crude terms, 10%, is it a quarter, is it 1/2?

That would be great.

My second question is in the last session, did you have any complaints of harassment and if so, what did what did they focus on and what action did you take as a result?

Go ahead, please, Sylvester.

Thank you very much.

I am not worried that the fundamental function of the Council is anyhow compromised, really not.

I mean, the Council has been doing the main part of its work.

It has been holding sessions at times when no other organisation was holding sessions.

I I think the Council is very much about keeping human rights issues of all kinds on an international agenda to avoid that they fall into oblivion, to take them up to share what we know with a wider audience among the media as well as in civil society and so on.

And, and that is being done now.

You know that over the years there have been different initiatives run by different countries, by different regions.

Some of them were overlapping, some of them were very much in the context of other activities running in these particular countries or anything like that.

So I think it is widely admitted by everybody that we have a very long list of various initiatives of mandate holders who sometimes do work which overlaps.

So there is a general admittance.

I think that this liquidity crisis which we're talking about is also an opportunity to start an exercise on seeing how how we could mainstream these activities a bit.

This is not something we can do before the session because there is not enough time.

We will enter that work after the session.

It isn't easy because it has been going on for a few years now and it is not simply a type of mathematics saying we have already 3 initiatives and such and such the subject and therefore we're going to reduce them to one.

That isn't so easy because it's very political.

Sometimes an initiative on the same subject matter comes from very different countries which want to target very different aspects.

So this negotiation will have to be conducted, It will be complicated.

We'll have to have some kind of political balance in the compromise where each region, each country has to give up a little bit of its previous activities and just merge them with activities which are going on anyway.

Yeah, but this will not be done at very short notice.

But I'm really not worried that there will be a shortfall for the council.

It's rather a bit of, you know, housekeeping that that needs to be done here on.

On the question of complaints and of reprisals, there is always one of the other case and we have had such cases this year as well.

You have to know that we have to be very careful in in every possible way how we deal with them.

So the first thing we always do is to do some kind of research.

This is usually done by the secretariat in order to find out whether the allegations are realistic and possible.

Sometimes the webcast helps us, sometimes we get information from various sides.

So if it materialises that an allegation could be true, I usually take up contact with the ambassador of the country in question.

I've done this a few times this year.

This first phase of the procedure is always confidential because we think and we hope that the easiest way of sorting out the problem is not not immediately talking to the press about it or anything like that.

But see with the country in question whether you can sort out the problem and allow them for a certain amount of face saving, if you see what I mean.

So this is where most of the reprisals I've heard about this year.

That's, that's the kind of stage we're in.

But I can confirm that there were some cases that we took them up, and we always report to the secretary general once a year on the cases we had.

And as a matter of fact, we're going to hear that report by the secretary General on reprisals now in September.

That report is actually dressed up in New York, but you will hear about it here.

[Other language spoken]

On that last point, I was just going to mention, thank you for for noting that We will share that report with you as soon as it's made public.

And this is in fact a report that has been repeatedly presented or rather produced and well presented to the Council indeed.

But this is the second time that we're actually have an interactive discussion on the contents there.

And so we'll have that, I believe, on the 25th of September.

Thank you for noting that, Ambassador Laurent, We have another question from Laurent Ciero of Twizzlers.

[Other language spoken]

There is still a.

Human rights.

Review coming at the General Assembly and, for instance, on whether the Council should remain A subsidiary body or become a full body, I was wondering what kind of consequences do you see?

With that.

Whole sequence.

So the the the question of liquidities, but also the question of of format and and.

[Other language spoken]

What kind of consequences?

Do you see on on that debate about the review?

Oh, thank you, as as you said, the review is planned between 2021 and 2026.

I have spent most of my professional life in multilateralism.

I know that if you were given five years for multilateral negotiation, nothing happens in the first year, nothing happens in the second year and then you slowly start about it.

I think this it will be the same case here.

What I realise is that quite a number of delegations are already saying now the various things we had to try out this year because we had no choice to do otherwise.

Things like having hybrid meetings and so on.

This is a little bit of trial and error already with the view to the review.

So we we have changed certain ways of acting.

Some of them we think are actually quite useful and will be useful in normal times as well.

So this is I think contribution which this year made we tried out a few ideas which the review might consider to be useful.

I don't see any consequences of the liquidity crisis on the review really, because the review is not an expensive exercise.

That's going to be a negotiation among Member states who are around in New York anyway.

You probably know that the discussion should be LED in New York, but we hope that they will request Geneva to make a contribution to that because Geneva is after all, where the Council is taking place and the people who are really familiar with all the nuts and bolts of the councillor sitting here in Geneva.

But so far I wouldn't be worried about the review at all.

On the contrary, I think we are delivering some ideas for the future review.

[Other language spoken]

We have a question from Moussa, Moussa Villa for all super play.

Good morning, everybody.

My question is about the situation in Lebanon, if this situation will be on the agenda or the discussion of Human Rights Council.

[Other language spoken]

So far, I can only give the same answer as I've given on other countries which were mentioned.

I haven't seen any official request on anything, but of course we're going to have so many general debates that delegations can feel free to mention Lebanon OR any any other country that they are worried about or that they want to discuss.

[Other language spoken]

Certainly, if we hear of anything specific, we'll let you know.

Moussa and colleagues, I don't see any others with their hands raised.

If that is the case, maybe we can draw this to a close.

And I would just remind you in terms of the financial questions, I'll do my best to try to get some answers for you, but I think you're better placed to point many of these questions to UNOG maybe through Alessandra or, or Real who would be Privy to some of this information.

So feel free to do that.

And for my part, I, I could try to look into some of these questions as well.

[Other language spoken]

I thank you before we set off on this very busy session.

And thank you for your reporting.

Thank you, Ambassador, for making yourself available this morning.

And we will see you soon, some in person, some on Zoom.

Take care and have a good day.

[Other language spoken]

Everybody.

[Other language spoken]