New members of CESC elected

Elections were held April 5, 2016 to fill 9 places on the Committee for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The result was 3 new members and 6 re-elected members.

New members

• Laura-Maria Craciunean (Romania)
• Sandra Liebenberg (South Africa)
• Michael Windfuhr (Germany)

Re-elected members

• Mohamed Ezzeldin Abdel-Moneim (Egypt)
• Lydia Carmelita Ravenberg (Suriname)
• Chen Shiqiu (China)
• Zdzislaw Kedzia (Poland)
• Mikel Mancisidor de la Fuente (Spain)
• Waleed Sadi (Jordan)

CESC 57th session held February 2016

Each person was elected to a four year term, to begin on January 1, 2017.  Elections to this Committee are made by the UN Economic and Social Council, rather than by the member states who have ratified the Covenant themselves (this is the only treaty body that is filled in this way, owing to the differences in the text of the Covenant).

Gender and geographic balance

The Committee now has 5 women and 13 men, as of the April 2016 elections (28% vs. 72%), which puts it roughly in the lower third of the system in terms of balance between men and women.  However, this reflects an improvement from the prior composition (only 3 women before this month's election), and also reflects the overall improvement in gender balance that several of the treaty bodies have experienced in the latest round of elections.

Treaty body	women	percent	comment	last election
CEDAW	22 of 23	96%	overbalanced	June 2014
SPT	13 of 25	52%		October 2014
CRC	9 of 18	50%		June 2014
CAT	4 of 10	40%	under balanced	October 2015
CERD	7 of 18	39%	under balanced	June 2015
CMW	5 of 14	36%	under balanced	June 2015
CRPD	6 of 18	33%	under balanced	June 2014
CCPR	5 of 18	28%	under balanced	June 2014
CESC	5 of 18	28%	under balanced	April 2016
CED	2 of 10	20%	under balanced	June 2015
TOTAL	78 of 172	45%

*since CEDAW has an overbalance of women (96%), it brings the overall average up (to 45%). When you remove CEDAW from the count the system-wide average becomes 38%.

   

The geographic balance of the Committee membership remains the same, which, according to the latest report of the General Assembly, is somewhat over representative of the Western European and other States and under representative of the African States.

Africa	4 members (22.2%)	28.4% of ratifications	-6%
Asia Pacific	4 members (22.2%)	22.7% of ratifications	balanced
Eastern European	3 members (16.6%)	13.7% of ratifications	+3%
Latin America and Caribbean	3 members (16.6%)	18.2% of ratifications	-1.6%
Western and other	4 members (22.2%)	16.0% of ratifications	+6%

Ref: UN General Assembly doc A/70/257, Report of the Secretary General -- Promotion of equitable geographical distribution in the membership of the human rights treaty bodies, Table 2, page 8 (3 August 2015).

Conclusion

Congratulations to the new and re-elected members of the Committee. It would appear that the method of selection is improving over time.  However, further improvement would always be welcome.  I wish each of the new members a rewarding experience and encourage them to listen closely to concerns and comments expressed by NGOs in their work, and to help to make the system as accessible and responsive as possible to NGO concerns.

Better press release coverage of these election developments would also be one area that would be helpful for those of us trying to follow this topic. It would also seem to make for a newsworthy event to highlight these election activities in official UN press releases -- something that local news media would probably be willing to include in their daily coverage, and therefore would help to promote general awareness of the treaty body system as a whole.

2015 statistics -- how is the treaty body system doing?

The year 2015 was important for the treaty body system, with expanded sessions and a number of innovations being introduced.  This post will focus on the state reporting function. A later post will examine the individual communications decided during the year.

Overview

In total, the treaty bodies examined 157 state reports during 2015, which represented a 20% increase over 2014.  They met over 89 weeks during the year, which was 16% more than the 77 weeks in 2014. In addition two treaty bodies, the Human Rights Committee and the Committee on the Rights of the Child, split a portion of their sessions into dual chambers, permitting a review of more reports. 

2014 vs. 2015

Here is a comparison between 2014 and 2015

Item	2014	2015	Comment
State reports	131	157	20% increase
Total pages of these reports	8553	9548	65 pages/rept in 2014; 61 pages/report in 2015
How many were filed late, 2 months or more?	78%	80%
How many reports were over the page limit?	63%	52%
How many sets of concluding recommendations were issued?	131	157	20% increase
How many pages of recommendations?	1400	1841	Concluding recommendations averaged 10 pages per report in 2014 & 11.7 pages per report in 2015
How many total recommendations were included in the treaty body reports?	6700	8725	There were an average of 51 recommendations per report in 2014, and 55 recommendations in 2015

Footnotes: 

1. Note that my counting of total numbers of recommendations is somewhat subjective -- it takes into account sub item structures. It is not simply a counting of numbered paragraphs, since some of these numbered recommendations actually contain many sub-items which really constitute separate, distinct programmatic recommendations by the Committee. 

2. The above figures do not include reports or recommendations from the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT), since the working methodology of that treaty body is unique and not comparable to the procedures in the other committees. 

Breakout by Committee

Here is the breakout of these figures by Committee (excluding SPT):

	Rept pages	Late reports	Over  pp limit	CO pages	CO # recs	No. of reports	Rept ave pages	CO averages
CCPR	1249	75%	65%	166	604	20	62.5	8.3 pp/30 recs
CESC	1230	100%	82%	178	817	17	72.4	10.5 pp/48 recs
CEDAW	1543	70%	67%	346	1734	27	57.1	12.8 pp/64 recs
CAT	773	63%	32%	172	798	19	40.7	9.1 pp/42 recs
CERD	778	85%	45%	177	703	20	38.9	8.9 pp/35 recs
CRPD	848	76%	21%	140	614	14	60.6	10 pp/44 recs
CRC	2698	79%	68%	551	3041	28	96.4	19.7 pp/109 recs
CMW	221	100%	0	69	282	7	31.6	9.9 pp/40 recs
CED	208	100%	0	42	132	5	41.6	84. pp/26 recs
TOTALS	9548	78%	52%	1841	8725	157	60.8	11.7 pp/56 recs

Footnotes: 

1. A state report was counted as late if it was submitted 2 months or more after the deadline

2. A state report was counted as over the page limit if it was 2 pages or more over the relevant guidelines

3. Note that all reports reviewed by three of these committees were submitted late

4. Note that CRC had by far the most report pages and average pages per report that they reviewed, and they issued the most concluding observations (recommendations) and the most average recommendations per report

5. CO is an abbreviation for concluding observations. Recs = recommendations (which are a part of the COs)

Session weeks

Another interesting metric is how many weeks each treaty body is meeting now during the year, including regular sessions and in pre-sessional working groups (pswg). 

System profile

Finally here is a snapshot of the system as a whole: 

Number of experts	172 experts from 85 different countries
New ratifications	53 (2.4% increase from 2014)
Number of women members of the treaty bodies	70 (40%) but this drops to 32% if CEDAW is removed (CEDAW has 22 of 23 women members)
Individual decisions	159 (an 11% increase from 2014)
New general comments	Only 1 this year (CEDAW 33 on women’s access to justice)
New instruments that came into force in 2015	none
New treaty body guidelines	Guidelines on reprisals adopted by the Treaty Body chairs in June 2015

In addition, a number of enhancements were made to follow up procedures by several of the treaty bodies. Discussions continue on the implementation of other procedures to strengthen the treaty body system.  The backlog of state reports waiting to be reviewed has diminished somewhat, but there is no statistical data available that quantifies this. 

Conclusion

In sum, 2015 seemed to be a good year for the treaty body system, especially in the implementation of some improvements, the increase in workload and outputs, and the consideration of hopefully other future enhancements to the system.  Much is still needed to be done in order to make the treaty body system truly responsive to rights holders and victims, but the signs would seem to be positive.