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At its 100th session, held in Geneva in October 2010, the Human Rights Committee (the Committee) completed its first reading of draft General Comment No. 34, on Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (the Covenant). Article 19 safeguards the right to freedom of opinion and expression. ISHR has followed the discussions as this first draft has been developed, and reports can be found here, here, here, here and here.
Now that the first reading has been completed the Committee is inviting comments on the draft from all interested parties. Read the draft General Comment. Submissions should be sent to the Secretariat of the Committee by 30 January 2011, at
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Why should NGOs make submissions?
General Comments detail the Committee's interpretation of the content of particular rights and of the corresponding obligations on States. As such they are used by both the Committee and other treaty bodies to guide their deliberations when reviewing States. They are also used by States themselves to help them understand their own obligations. General Comments therefore play a significant role in any assessment of whether or not a State is satisfying its obligations with respect to a particular right.
Article 19 of the Covenant, on freedom of expression, obviously has particular implications for the ability of human rights defenders to carry out their legitimate work. It is crucial that human rights defenders should understand the content of draft General Comment 34, and ensure their own views are represented in the deliberations of the Committee by making a submission on the content of the first draft.
Some important issues raised in the draft General Comment include access to information as an essential component of the right to freedom of expression (paragraphs 18 to 20), the grounds under which freedom of expression can legitimately be restricted (paragraphs 22 to 37), the status of bloggers as compared to traditionally trained journalists (paragraph 46), and the decriminalisation of defamation (paragraph 49).
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