Ambassador Khan Tells How We Won Membership In UN Human Rights Council
As a Pacific Island nation, we continue to punch above our weight in terms of playing a leadership role in the international arena.
From COP23 presidency, Presidency of the UN General Assembly, to chairing the G77, it is safe to say that we are a trailblazing nation. And once again this rings true after Fiji was offered a seat in the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Fiji was elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council last week at the UN General Assembly. Fiji received 187 votes. The membership is for a period of three years beginning on January 1, 2019. Eighteen new members were elected: Argentina, Austria, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Czech Republic, Denmark, Eritrea, Fiji, India, Italy, Philippines, Somalia, Togo, and Uruguay.
The Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations system made up of 47 States responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe.
This is an interview with our Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva,
who is at the helm of this historic achievement.
When did Fiji’s engagement with the United Nations Human Rights Council begin and how? A:
Fiji opened its Mission in Geneva in 2014. Prior to that we had only attended Human Rights Council (HRC) meetings as an observer, and only for meetings of relevance to visiting delegations. Thus, our engagement with the Council was limited.
What were the steps taken by Fiji to be the member of the UNHRC? A:
After the opening of our Mission, we began to attend meetings (HRC) regularly, to attend the negotiation of Resolutions and to co-sponsor those important to Fiji, and to attend side events.
We were also asked to chair many of these events and we even chaired the Council itself in its High level Panel Discussions on two occasions.
Our Universal periodic Review
(2nd Cycle) was also in 2014, and was a success because of the number of recommendations which we accepted, and because of the high level of the delegation which participated from Fiji.
The delegation was led by the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice
Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum and included the Chief
Justice Anthony Gates and the Director of Public Prosecutions Christopher
Pryde.
As a result of the UPR,
Fiji agreed to abolish the death penalty, to ratify all core human rights conventions by 2020, to ratify United Nations Convention Against Torture (UNCAT), and to effectively implement the National Gender Policy. We have ratified almost all the Conventions (Convention on the Rights of Persons Living with Disability, UNCAT, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) with two more due next year, and have abolished the death penalty as well as adopting a mechanism for implementing the gender policy. Of course implementing rights is always work in progress, and also reflects the fluid way that rights are interpreted by the courts.
However, the fact that our courts can use international law and jurisprudence to interpret rights in Fiji, is a great advantage and ensures that Fiji truly respects the universality of human rights.
How does Fiji view its membership of the UNHRC? A:
With such progress, including the strong focus on access to justice and removing the risk of torture in Police procedures by launching the first hour procedure in collaboration with the Legal Aid Commission, and by starting the video recording of interviews at the Police stations, Fiji could look at membership of the UN Human Rights Council. We were using our presence in Geneva and at the Council to improve the implementation of rights in Fiji, and to increase our ratification statistics.
In addition to this, in our interventions in Geneva, Fiji led a new conversation on human rights and climate change. Climate justice was a popular topic for civil society but had not entered the conversation in mainstream human rights.
Fiji started speaking on this at the Council, co-sponsoring side events on this, and signed the Geneva Pledge of a group of countries led by Costa Rica and Switzerland committed to climate change and human rights. In becoming a member of the Council, Fiji became the first PSIDS to become a member and only the third Small Island Developing State after Maldives and Mauritius.
Of course the hard work starts now. As members we now have a right to vote on resolutions on the Council on some very difficult situations around the world.
Our policy will be to be constructive, to always rely on the empirical evidence presented by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights mechanisms, to ensure that we always vote to strengthen and validate human rights globally.
We will also continue to ensure that climate change and human rights is a continuous focus at the Council, and that there is coherence amongst all UN bodies in relation to human rights and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s), and in the symbiotic relationship between civil and political rights and social economic and cultural rights.
Fiji sees national development and human rights to be inseparable. Fiji already has a strong and friendly relationship with all member states of the Human Rights Council and with all Missions in Geneva. However, we will strengthen our relationship with the Commonwealth through the Commonwealth Small States Office in Geneva, and with the Small States led by Singapore in Geneva.
We will continue to engage closely with other SIDS in Geneva, and with civil society in Geneva. We hope to lend a strong, progressive but moderate voice to the meetings and negotiations.