International Service for Human Rights

The Third Committee of the General Assembly is currently underway. By the end of November or early December, it is expected to adopt some 60 resolutions on a broad range of human rights matters. Some of these will be highly controversial, such as those dealing with country-specific situations and the death penalty. Others may trigger heated debate about the independence of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and its budget, a debate which has been brewing in the Human Rights Council in Geneva. The Committee’s interactive dialogues with special procedures will have an element of the unknown as nine of the 21 mandate holders scheduled to attend only took up their role in 2008 and have not previously come before the Third Committee. Read the full Revised New York Alert...