4291st Meeting, 146th Session, Human Rights Committee (CCPR)
Human Rights Treaty Bodies
Date: 20 October 2026
Language: English
Transcript: https://transcripts.un.org/en/ccpr/4291
Transcripts available through this tool are created by using automatic speech recognition and are not official records nor official documents of the United Nations. Official records and official documents are available on the Official Document System of the United Nations.

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CCPR · Chair [17:11]:

Dear colleagues, dear friends, good morning. I would like to welcome you to the third meeting of the 146th session of the Human Rights Committee, meeting number 4291. This is a public meeting and it is being webcast. Today's meeting is devoted to the second reading of our draft general comment number 37, number 38, on the right to freedom of association under the Article 22 of the Covenant.

At its 144th-- Au titre de l'article 22 du Pacte, l'année dernière, nous avions en effet décidé d'élaborer une observation générale au titre de l'article 22. Et lors de sa 45e session, en mars 2026, nous avons mis la dernière main à la première lecture.

Depuis la première lecture, nous avons reçu quelque 250 soumissions de États parties, organisations de la société civile, universitaires, institutions nationales des droits de l'homme, and United Nations and regional human rights mechanisms. Between March and October, our rapporteur, Madame Tigrouza, has worked closely with the Secretariat to review these submissions and to revise the draft. The text before us today reflects that extensive work. Now I will give the floor to rapporteur to present the work carried out between March and October, including an overview of the submissions received. She will have 15 minutes for her presentation. I'll give you the floor.


CCPR · Rapporteur [19:16]:

Thank you, Chair. Well, this is a very solemn occasion for our committee because, in fact, we have held some debates in the first reading of the text. Then we followed the recommendations of one of our committee members, Rodrigo Carraso, who said, "We have to open up the doors. We can't keep this in private." So that's what we have done for the adoption of the text in the second reading. We've opened up the rooms, and I'm very pleased to see representatives of states and civil society joining us.

Here in the room, as well as academics.

So, Chair, in the first reading, we managed to get through to the end of the text by the end of the 145th session of the Committee in March. So we then launched the second reading and we received a very large number of submissions from very different sources from all regions of the world, and that is absolutely crucial and very useful for us. Before I move into the substance and the origin of those consultations, perhaps I could first say a few words about the online and in-person consultations that I was able to hold.

Between the end of our 145th session and the beginning of this one, the 146th.

So, I met online with various experts, again from different origins.

And I have to.

Say the consultations focused on the legal issues which we had left pending at our March session. There are a number of different issues which we weren't completely comfortable with, so we decided either to exclude them or to keep them in the draft, but subject them to further research. So this was particularly the case of lobbies.

And that's something which I will come back to when we go through the text paragraph by paragraph.

We had some really interesting consultations as to whether we should include that issue in the text or not. There was another issue which was of great concern to me, which was the online dimension, the link between freedom of association and artificial intelligence and new technologies.

I.

Really needed to learn more about that, so I held various consultations on that subject.

I will leave off the thanks and acknowledgements of all those who took part in the consultations, and I will thank you when we finalise adoption. So With the help of the.

Secretariat, I've prepared a brief presentation for you, which gives you an overview of where the various contributions have come from. The vast majority of them are already available on the committee's website. Some contributions have remained confidential at the request of the sources. Nevertheless, those contributions are included in the statistics. What is really interesting to see, as you mentioned, Chair, is the fact that we received contributions from a broad range of sources. Contributions from States Parties, that was very important because during the debates we held in March, it became clear to all Committee members that the text was really designed for use by states parties because they are the prime beneficiaries of the clarifications that the Committee can make on Article 22 of the Covenant and its interpretation. So I was very pleased to see that States Parties from various regions have taken part. Some of their contributions have remained confidential, so they have not been posted on the website. But when you read States Parties' contributions, you better understand their constitutional and legal frameworks and the difficulties that States may find in implementing the Covenant. That was something which I have borne in mind as I have revised the text. In fact, a number of the Committee members insisted on this in March. This is not an academic document. This is not a theoretical discussion on the freedom of association. This text has to be useful for the prime beneficiaries. So I'm delighted to have had States Parties contributions, as well as those from national human rights institutions and academia. You may be surprised to see the category of individuals, but generally speaking, they are lawyers. And as they don't belong to any academic institution, they cannot be included under academia.

Their contributions were provided online. The vast majority of contributions, of course, do come from civil society, organized civil society.

And if you have gone through the contributions, then you will see that we have a wide range of organizations that have contributed, some based in Geneva, but others based far and wide around the world. And in fact, I've got a slide which illustrates that.

And this has given rise to a fairly broad geographic review.

As to how freedom of association is implemented in almost all states which have.

Ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

I particularly appreciate contributions from experts and special procedures, and I must refer to the Special Rapporteur on the freedom of assembly and association, Geena Romero, because she has played a fundamental role.

But we've also had.

Contributions from other United Nations special procedures rights holders, such as the Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders. We've also had a contribution from the International Labour Organization. And when it comes to regional contributions, we got feedback from the European Social Committee And it's very useful to see how European states as a whole can interpret Article 22 in the world of work.

Here you have the geographic breakdown of the states parties who have contributed.

I don't really want to overemphasize this, but I think it's really interesting to get an overview of this geographic spread.

You see that almost all regions are represented.

That's good to know. On the next slide, you can see the geographic breakdown of contributions from national human rights institutions. It's very interesting to see this because all too often.

We get very constructive proposals from these institutions. So I think it's really important to respect the diversity of legal context, political and social contexts in which the covenant is applied.

Frequently, The contributions from national human rights institutions indicated.

That the general comment has been drafted in Geneva and is removed from national context, but the specific situation or circumstances of each state must also be taken into consideration.

And in fact, this is something we do when we hold dialogues with the states parties.

But I think it's very interesting that.

This comment was made and it's something that we're going to come back to during the discussion.

I've already had an exchange on Ms. Donders on this point. So as I was saying, we're coming back to this when we discuss indigenous peoples.

And how we can better incorporate this into the text than we did in March.

So how can we integrate indigenous peoples and the link that they have to freedom of association?

Now, with regard to the next slide, you can see the breakdown of NGO contributions.

I also took on board Mr. Bakra NDI's comment in intercessional period.

Mr. NDI indicated that there was a need to verify.

That we're not always consulting the same organizations and same stakeholders, but we should try and cast the net as far and wide as possible. And this is something that is reflected in these statistics. As you know, there are lies, damn lies and statistics.

So You have to be careful with what lessons you draw from statistics.

There's very strong representation of age here, but if you read the contributions, then you'll see that sometimes we got the same submission from six or seven different.

Sources.

Obviously, I've included them individually in the statistics, but it does risk over representing.

The situation.

For example, there are many contributions on freedom of association in Sri Lanka. So perhaps these figures don't really reflect geographic representation. Also, Oceania and Australia, we got a number of contributions which say the same thing. And so I think it was the same NGO that drafted them.

Perhaps it was an NGO with many different offices.

And so perhaps they had contributed the same text from different offices.

And that's how they got to 6%.

And we didn't really get so many substantive contributions from Australia and New Zealand.

This is the last slide and one which I will dwell on for slightly longer. When?

I read the contributions in detail.

I wanted to look at what were the recurrent themes and remarks and proposals.

And what I can tell you is that in 95% of the contributions we received, the comments were very constructive and positive, be they from states or NHRIs, civil society or academia. There was perhaps a very small percentage, particularly from civil society.

Which were perhaps somewhat out of context or they were.

In the wrong place.

I got a couple of contributions on General Comment 37, freedom of assembly.

So I discarded them, but I would like to say that overall, the quality of the contributions was very high indeed. I.

Responding to a request from Ms. Basim now, who wanted to know what the recurrent aspirations were. I haven't put everything in full detail, but I would like to point out that we got a huge number of contributions on human rights defenders or environmental defenders. We also got an excellent contribution from Michel Forst, who is on the special rapporteur on the Aha's convention.

We also got a lot of contributions on reprisals and transnational reprisals.

In the March 26 draft, these issues were raised, but I have beefed them up somewhat. Indigenous peoples.

We're going to come back to this, but I would like to broach the subject now.

One of the criticisms of the previous version was that there was a blurring of indigenous peoples and minorities. This is because in the previous version we had a sentence which read indigenous peoples and minorities. So, I received a number of contributions, including from States Parties and national human rights institutions, which.

Pointed out that indigenous peoples have a specific relationship with freedom of association because it's something which is linked to their cultural identity or their right to participate in affairs which concern them.

There are two or three other subjects which I would like to refer to now, digital issues. I am sure that that speaks volumes to our chair and a number of other committee members. A number of contributions drew the committee's attention to the very different environment in which associations work today, or when people take the decision to form an association or not. In the revised version, I have added a number of references to the digital environment.

And another recurrent subject was the issue of children or youth led associations. There are a number of states.

In Europe, but also in India, where the issue of children or youth led associations is re-emerging and becoming a leading issue?

And so we had some very interesting consultations with children.

This doesn't happen a lot with our committee.

Obviously it happens more frequently with the Committee on the Rights of the Child, but when we prepare a dialogue, we can hold consultations with children because we need to understand.

What is the reality of freedom of association for children, what kind of reprisals or punishments could they be subject to when they exercise their freedom of association in school or in cultural or sporting associations. There are two other subjects which I would like to round off on now, but which I want to highlight. In the previous version, We had nothing on this subject, but a number of national human rights.

Institutions, as well as NGOs and states, have raised the point that courts will play a special role on this. But national human rights institutions, when they're in line with Paris principles, can also play a pivotal role.

In the implementation of the freedom of association.

So in one of the paragraphs, I propose that we refer to this matter.

Lastly, I wanted to mention the issue of workers, migrant workers, informal workers, obviously between March and now.

The International Court of Justice has issued its opinion on the right to strike. So that's something which I'm going to incorporate into the text.

But another important event in 2026 was the adoption by the ILO of a new convention on platform workers, digital platform workers. So these are subjects which were at the forefront of some of the contributions. So Thank you very much for the slides. Now, I'd like to round off by referring to the way in which this new version has been drafted and prepared for the debate and adoption by the committee.

There are three points that I would quickly like to refer to. The first is that, as we mentioned in March.

The idea in our committee is that throughout the general comments, we have avoided writing academic dissertations.

It's not up to us to get locked in our ivory towers and have an academic debate on the implementation of the covenant.

These texts need to be useful for the stakeholders, and that's why it's very important to have the participation of States Parties, the text needs to be useful and usable for.

The effective implementation of Article 22.

And that's something which I've always kept in my mind, because in the first version, some of you said.

That it's perhaps a little too abstract or too academic.

So we worked on this issue a great deal in March, and We've continued to do so during the intercessional period. Second point, which you've seen, the structure of the text hasn't changed. So I don't think there's a need for the committee to work on the structure.

As adopted in March, it's the same here, there are certain paragraphs which may have changed place or been removed.

But I think that something which was useful in the contributions from States and NHRIs and others was the key words or subjects which were missing and which had absolutely to be included in the General Comment.

I'd just like to refer to one of them.

And I have to say that mea culpa, and that was about civil disobedience. It was something which was fundamental in General Comment 37 and It was missing from the first version that we'd adopted of this general comment, but it's absolutely vital.

Bearing in mind civil space today.

So I've taken it up from general comment 37 and I've really used Michel.

Force's work, which also feeds on general comment 37.

So when we go paragraph by paragraph, Chair, I will highlight the key words which have been incorporated.

So that will stimulate discussion in the committee and help us with our adoption.

For those of us who are.

Following online, I would like to highlight that the revised text was uploaded onto the site by the Secretariat. Thank you very much for doing so.

The link is also available on WebTV, so you should be able to have direct access to it. Nevertheless, we will not make any further calls for contributions. We're moving now onto the stage of the debate in the committee.

I do hope it's adoption. Thank you very much, Chair.


CCPR · Chair [40:34]:

Thank you very much, Madam Tigrija, for your presentation and excellent slides. I'm not sure whether those joining us online were able to see them, but these are very helpful and beautiful. I will now open the floor to the members, but please limit your questions and comments at this stage to the consultation process and any over-arching issues, as we will shortly move to paragraph by paragraph consideration of the text. So please keep your interventions focused and brief so that we can devote most of our time to the substance of the text. I'll open the floor for general questions. I see none. Everybody wants to go to the text, so I will give the floor. Oh, Mr. Saidov, you have the floor.


CCPR · Member [41:41]:

Dear Chair, dear Helen, distinguished members of committee, with your permission, I would like to begin with a few words in French.

Dear Ellen, I would like to begin by extending my most sincere thanks to you for your excellent work, your patience, and your listening to us.

This is quite extraordinary work, and we deeply appreciate your efforts.

And our colleagues from the Secretariat for their valuable contributions and hard work. Preparing a General Comment is a difficult task. It requires knowledge, patience, dialogue, and respect for differing views. JLN, you have shown all these qualities. I am especially pleased and grateful that many of the proposals I presented in my earlier written comments have been taken into account and are now reflected in the revised draft. I would particularly like to highlight the stronger recognition of the digital dimension of freedom of association under Article 22 of the Covenant. I also welcome the attention given to effective legal remedies, judicial protection, and the responsibilities of digital platforms, the rights of vulnerable groups, and the protection of freedom of association during emergencies. These were among the important issues I raised in my earlier comments. I sincerely thank you for listening to my proposals and giving such careful attention. Dear colleagues, today people come together not only in meeting rooms or public spaces, but also online. They create groups, share ideas, defend their rights, and work together through digital platforms. But new technology also brings new risks. including digital surveillance and misuse of artificial intelligence. The COVID-19 pandemic taught us an important lesson. Even when people cannot meet face to face, their right to come together must remain protected. The pandemic changed the way people meet. It did not change their fundamental rights. And this is why I believe our General Comment is so important. If we adopt General Comment No. 38, it will be the first General Comment adopted by our Committee since General Comment No. 37 in 2020. It will therefore be an important achievement following the COVID-19 pandemic and a meaningful contribution to the 60th anniversary of the two international covenants. They will be a major achievement for our committees. Our covenant is six years old, but its message is not old. Its message is for today. tomorrow and future generations. We have a special opportunity to show that the Covenant remains a living instrument, able to respond to the challenges of our time. I fully support our common efforts to finalize this important General Comment in a positive and constructive spirit. Let me conclude in French.

Dear Len, thanks again for all your work. your openness and willingness to engage in dialogue. Thanks to all of our common efforts, we can ensure that this text is a great achievement for our committee and for human rights. Thank you, dear Len.


CCPR · Chair [45:57]:

Thank you, Mr. Saidov. Now I'll give the floor to Madame Bassin.


CCPR · Member [46:09]:

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson, and thank you for having given all your support for this very important work all along, whether through discussions or otherwise. And Helene?

Helene, I need not just throw flowers your way. You know, how much appreciation and respect we all have for your work. Nevertheless, I do want to say, bravo, you did it.

But one issue that is always challenging when anybody talks about the right to freedom of association or assembly or so on, this is the argument concerning the internal harmony of the society, the national peace, and the internal security, and the fear of distraction, thugs, whoever who is going to use these assemblies against the society instead of being for the society. So how did you deal with, and I'm sure you received notions of that kind, how did you marry between the general comment and what it implies and this argument? Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [48:04]:

Thank you, Madame Bassim. I'll give the floor to Madame Abdallah Shorab.


CCPR · Member [48:17]:

Thank you very much, Chair. As we begin this second reading, I would like to convey my most sincere gratitude to Madame de Gruga, dear Alain, and to the whole team of the Secretariat, as well as all our colleagues in the Committee. Congratulations for this outstanding achievement. Alain, this text, which I was rereading well into the night last night, is the product of something that we clearly see is participatory with a great level of legal rigor, as it includes all comments, the many numerous contributions. I know there were many coming from both states and civil society, national human rights institutions, and academia as well. Many of these voices today are included here in this text, hence your work. And that gives this document even more legitimacy. At this time, when the freedom of assembly and association is under threat in many regions in the world, this.

General Comment will prove to be an essential.

Tool for human right defenders, judges, legislators, civil society organizations, citizens in general. So once again, Alain, thank you truly for your commitment and your generosity. We are finishing this here with, we're crowning it at the end at this time when human rights need it most. They need strong people with resolve, with conviction and dedication to their work. So now, as always, you can count on me on this final stage.

Merci, Alain.


CCPR · Chair [49:56]:

Thank you very much, Madame Dr. Bichor, and I'll give the floor to Madame Donders.


CCPR · Member [50:08]:

Thank you very much.

I would like to.

Thank the Secretary for this effort, truly great effort they have done.

Because I do want to make some sort of general statements on several issues that also will pass in the para by para, but just to sort of warm you up for that paragraph by paragraph. So first of all, I think we should really also remind ourselves what is a general comment for? What is the purpose of a general comment? And I think it's mostly to help states and all kinds of actors to implement the covenant better. but also to help people to know what their rights actually are. And it's therefore really rewarding and reassuring to see the interest and cooperation that the rapporteur just described with states parties, civil society, academics, individual human rights defenders or people. And now, sorry, it's up to us to ensure that this text will be clear and reflects also our experience and interpretation of the Covenant, which we have done in our concluding observations, individual communications, and earlier general comments. It is, as the rapporteur said, it's not an academic exercise, but it's a document with legal value that will be attached to our Covenant. So our task is really important here to make sure that indeed this text is usable for many stakeholders. Now, a few general remarks on issues also mentioned by the rapporteur in terms of broader context and also the way we try to draft these kind of general comments. And there's a few items that I would like to highlight. And the first is that throughout the text, we use individuals, but we also refer to certain communities, groups, or peoples, and that we rightly do that. However, do we indeed thereby also want to explicitly recognize group rights? Rights not for individuals or to be enjoyed collectively, as freedom of association is a clear example of, but also do we want to recognize collective entities as rights holders of freedom of association? I think we should, but I also think we should carefully agree on that. The rapporteur also already mentioned the specific situation of indigenous peoples, and I fully support her in this draft, where we indeed pay clear attention to that. I would, however, like to see at several parts in the draft a bit more attention for other groups, ethnic, linguistic, racial, national minorities that may face some of the same challenges, even though the context may be different. But we could also think about other groups, such as Roma, Sinti, Travellers, those kind of groups. How will we deal with that and how will we have a balanced, in my view, inclusion of those groups? Then another issue I would like to highlight in terms of the obligations that we describe in sector four is that we use the terminology of the obligation to respect, which seems to link to the tripart typology of obligations developed by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, namely the obligation to respect, protect and fulfill. However, In the positive obligation, we do not continue along those lines, and we prefer to use the more general term positive obligations, as the committee has consistently done in the past, and I agree with that. So my question would be to the colleagues, will we indeed stick to the negative positive obligations language, or, which is possible, will we switch towards the language?

Of the respect protect.

And fulfill as the other committee, but also other committees, by the way, have done in the past. I'm not saying I don't have a particular favor for either one of them, but I think it's something to think about for the colleagues. Final point, is the right to freedom of association a non-derogable right? Here again, we seem to be a little bit vague. It's not mentioned as such in Article 4 of our covenant on emergency situations, but we here and there in the draft seem to suggest that, where we say, for instance, as a non-derogable right, freedom of association, et cetera, et cetera. However, later on, we do say it's perhaps not non-derogable, but we clearly, in my view, outline the strict requirements for derogation, for instance, in paragraphs 95, 58 and 59, sorry. So we just have to make up our minds again to be as clear as possible. Coming back to my first point, I think it's very important that with this general comment, which is very timely and which I warmly support, we do make clear what we indeed see in terms of interpretation of this particular provision so that it's most useful for states parties, but also of course civil society, national human rights institutes and the people that actually want to enjoy this right. I thank you very much.


CCPR · Chair [56:16]:

Thank you very much, Madame Donders.

It's excellent points you made indeed. And I see no more the members, so I will go back to the rapporteur for your comments and please.


CCPR · Rapporteur [56:33]:

Merci.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for very kind words. And I'm not going to say anything about that because then I'm going to get too worked up, too much feeling in this room. Let's stick to the legal things that I'm much more comfortable speaking with in public about.

So thank you.

I'll say something about the three.

Questions that you had, Madame Bassin, Madame Donders, that are absolutely essential for our discussion.

I'm also quite pleased to see that we're putting them on the table for discussion right away, because these are topics that will be with us throughout our discussion. Perhaps I will begin with the very complicated question, do we recognize these collective entities that we spoke about, trade unions, and communities, do we see them as rights holders or not?

And we did talk about this in March.

In one of the contributions, I didn't receive it again, but it was a contribution that we had. And the proposal was to follow what the Inter-American Court on Human Rights has done with its opinion 22.

Where they said, well, the American Convention on Human Rights is focused on individual rights, that's its core, but there are two or three exceptions, indigenous people and trade unions and trade union confederations. And the Inter-American Court then built the status of right-holding for these entities as regards the freedom of association primarily.

I didn't want to include this in the draft again.

Because I see where the Inter-American Court started.

From and how it does make sense in its own jurisprudence as they're building it. But can we say that now our committee can move from the recognition of individual rights towards the recognition of collective rights?

If the answer is yes, then I'm there, I'm with you.

And we have a way to do that. That is the consultative opinion, which is quite interesting and it's.

Some sections are focused on trade union freedom or others.

But that's something that we would have to talk about.

It's very, very important.

So thank you for raising it.

Then the second question, Madam Bassim, it was also an issue.

It's a matter of balance, something that we're going to have to be mindful of throughout the consideration of the whole draft.

And I say it's an issue with the balance because, obviously, Article 22 is not an absolute right.

And as you said quite eloquently, Article 22 does not cover associations, and we mentioned this example in March, does not cover the association of criminals or offenders.

It does not apply to associations or political parties.

Whose goal is achieved by using violent means in order to retain power.

So we clearly recognize, as is done by the covenants, a state's ability, I might even say a state's obligation or duty, to step in and participate, intervene in those cases to protect the population from this type of association.

But at the same time, and this is mainly relevant in paragraph 54 and 55, where I further tightened the state's obligations and those of individuals with the concept of abuse of rights. And we know that the freedom of association is not absolute, and.

That it could not be misused to trample upon the rights that are recognized by the Covenant. I mentioned this and built upon what was said on hate speech and incitement to violence and all that.

The risk is still there and we should ensure that states do not use these arguments to.

Exercise further control in the civil space. So I have this in articles 54 and 55 in light of what we have said. And when we do get to those paragraphs, we'll see that we can tighten it a bit more. I think Mr. has already done something along those lines, trying to make these criteria more rigorous when drawing a distinction between incitement to violence or spreading or war propaganda, for example. And then lastly, in Article 22, is it non-derogable? Well, for the time being, we are clearly saying in paragraph 58 that it is not, that it is not in the list of Article 4.

But it did not escape the very acute eye of Madame Donders.

So we say this, but this is what the committee has done in General Comment No. 29 on non-derogability. And we say, when there is a right that is potentially non-derogable, but it's linked to a right that is derogable, then in a way that brings it into the sphere of non-derogability for that right. And what I'm thinking of by way of example is when we're going to ban an.

Association, situation of conflict, or others, where there's issue of humanitarian aid, or rescue operations at sea where they're trying to rescue migrants that are about to drown. Is this a limitation to freedom of association, or are we there trampling on different ground?

But here we have some specialist on derogable rights.

I think Mr. will have something to say about derogability or non-derogability.

But we have seen, as we read General Observation 29, I wondered, well, can we not, in certain circumstances, tap into 22 for the list of non-derogability.

Perhaps we need to clarify this further by referring to our previous General Comment 29. So, thank you very much, Chair. I was about to thank you, Mr. Paragraph, because I've been thinking of paragraphs so much, but thank you, Chair.

So, I guess the matter we have to consider now is, do we all agree with the structure? Can we proceed with this structure, and then we'll discuss the substance paragraph by paragraph.


CCPR · Chair [1:03:23]:

Thank you very much.

This seems we will have to discuss a lot on some issues. Okay, as Madam Tiruzia mentioned, first before we go into the paragraph by paragraph, she wishes to ask you if all the structure of the text is fine with me. So once the structure in terms of the numbers and orders, is fine with you, then we can go move to the paragraph by paragraph consideration. Any concerns, objections? I see none, so we can move to the paragraph by paragraph consideration. So I will go back to the Madam Tigrusa.


CCPR · Rapporteur [1:04:22]:

Thank you.

So we're keeping the structure.

I'd like to say for those that, given that this session is public, but we're keeping the same structure. But what we did in March, and we're probably going to do it now, I'm sure we are, is that we will be able to change the order of the paragraphs.

It is a living text. It will move around, I'm sure. and perhaps we'll be adding or removing some paragraphs.

So on paragraph one, not a lot of changes here. The only thing that we did add was to insist on the fact that freedom of association is important as well in emergency situations under Article 4 in the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. And so I said, including during emergency contexts. in the next to the last line. But other than that, the document is the same as the one we adopted in March.


CCPR · Chair [1:05:32]:

Mr. Teraya.


CCPR · Member [1:05:33]:

May I have a comment? Yes. Thank you, Chair. And since this is my first time to speak, I'd like to express my appreciation to Madam Tigrija for the tremendous work you have put into this draft. Many stakeholders are eagerly awaiting the outcome of work. My comment is concerning to the last sentence of paragraph which Mr. Gouliaos mentioned, this insert of the including during emergency content. As Mr. Undas has already mentioned, this seems to me the Article 22 makes the nonderogable rights. While freedom of association and dignity remain important even in times of public emergency, Article 22 is not among the list of the provision of the, in Article 4, paragraph 2 of the Covenant. I would therefore suggest clarifying how the protection of freedom of association in such circumstances refers to the possibility of lawful delegation under Article 4. But I think this is too early to discuss. So my first suggestion is just delete it. We don't have to comment or to discuss it in detail. Or the second point I would like to mention is that the, as Madame Tigris just said, this is not academic work. And for me, expression on condition, we can just say that essential prerequisite or something. So we could change to the phrase. Thank you very much.


CCPR · Chair [1:07:38]:

Thank you very much, Mr. Taraya. Ms. Lenarte. Madam Lenarte, please.


CCPR · Member [1:07:46]:

I will be very, very quick just because the document is complex and Madam Tigrija received so many comments. So I just will remind that on para 9, it has been long discussed and basically agreed by the that there is we.


CCPR · Chair [1:08:14]:

Madam, Madam, Madam. Yeah, we know we are discussing. Please tell me paragraph one now.


CCPR · Member [1:08:23]:

Yes, para para one. But if we will not reach para 9 today's, I just wanted to to remind that there is. lack of inclusion of one group next to sex workers, it should become sex survivors, and it has been agreed. So, thank you very much.


CCPR · Chair [1:08:45]:

Okay, I give the floor to Madame Donders.


CCPR · Member [1:08:50]:

Thank you very much.

I have... Bear with me, colleagues, I have quite some comments today.

But I also think, again, generally, that this is very important that we do this work. So, anyway, I already spoke a little bit with the rapporteur about the term autonomy, and I think since this is a public session, she answered me personally, and I was convinced of that answer, but could you please repeat that in public, because it's important, because For me, that's not a very well known, well, it's a well known term, but.

In light of these kind of documents, we don't see it that often.

And also because it's again, individual and collective autonomy, and perhaps, but that we see in the final drafting, whether we could have any reference there that explains or reference to an earlier general comment, I think where we use that as well. Then just to respond to my dear colleague, Mr. Taraja, on this emergency context, I also highlighted it. Here, to be honest, I'm not completely against leaving it in because it doesn't.

Say that freedom of association should be completely ensured in all emergency contexts.

But it says, you know, it's a very important thing during these contexts. So I don't mind. I think it's a different type of phrasing than to say it's a non-derogable right. But I could also certainly follow him if he says, do we really need it here? And that is up to, I think, colleagues to decide whether we want to keep it here. It comes back further down. So that was just to, give a bit of support to basic support to both sides. Actually, that doesn't really help, does it? In the sense of here again, I don't see it as necessarily very problematic. But if colleagues feel that it's probably a bit too much here in the first paragraph, because it may lead to confusion about the non derogability or derogability, then perhaps indeed we should consider to cross it out. Thank you very much.


CCPR · Chair [1:10:54]:

Thank you very much.

I'll give the floor to Madame Bassim.


Speaker 24 [1:11:00]:

She's not. She's not. She's not. She's not. She is.


CCPR · Chair [1:11:05]:

She's. She's. She's. She's. She's. She. She's. She's. She's.


Speaker 26 [1:11:07]:

She's.

She is.

She's.


CCPR · Chair [1:11:11]:

She's. She's. She. She's, she's.


Speaker 28 [1:11:14]:

She's.


CCPR · Chair [1:11:14]:

She's.


Speaker 30 [1:11:15]:

She's.

She's. No.

No, I just.


CCPR · Chair [1:11:19]:

Okay. Okay.

So I'll give the floor to Mr. Saidov.


CCPR · Member [1:11:28]:

Once again, I want to congratulate Alain and the members of the committee. Dyla, I fully agree with you and Alain writes to all members. The revision is based on the inputs. The first reading, General Concept 8, attracted almost 200 but also on the, it's also, it's very hard, it's very analytical work. I have, it's very concrete suggestion regarding the para one. Here indicated social, economic, cultural, and political objectives. I fully agree, but I want add after the political, at legal objectives. The legal objective is more important for our general comment.

Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [1:12:28]:

Okay, thank you very much.

Any further requests? Fernandez Reza, please.


CCPR · Member [1:12:43]:

On the first paragraph, I'm a bit confused over the expression collective and individual autonomy.

Individual and collective autonomy. I'm not sure if we have to think about a different expression because then it says in solidarity with others.

So I understand what we're trying to get at, but technically speaking, I think it could be improved upon.

You can think about better wording.


CCPR · Chair [1:13:17]:

Thank you very much.

I see none, so I'll go back to the rapporteur.


CCPR · Rapporteur [1:13:28]:

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I'll start with the issue of autonomy.

In fact, I had a Conversation late yesterday evening with Madame Donders about this expression.

I think it's important to retain.

The phrase exercise individual and collective autonomy in solidarity with others.

In fact, there's.

A footnote which we could incorporate here, so if you agree, I'll add it, but. This is something which refers back to the first paragraph of General Comment 37. So it's not new language for us here in the committee. So I can add that reference to GC 37 in a footnote. What I can tell Ms. Donders is that when we adopted GC 37, we considered autonomy as the individual's right to lead their life in full respect for their convictions, orientation and private life.

So it's autonomy in the meaning of self-determination, if you like. You're asking autonomy from whom?

Well, autonomy.

With regard to others, I should be able to take my own choices for regarding end of life choices. That's something which is covered by autonomy and autonomy from. The state.

It doesn't mean independence because we are.

Part of the animal Kingdom, so we live in.

An environment with others.

But.

One thing that I haven't. had a chance to check is if we define autonomy in the long-standing general comment on the right to life. I don't know if it's defined there.

So that's what is understood by autonomy.

And I will add the reference to our previous general comment in the footnote, and I will see if there is anything else in our.

Case law or if there's a definition in a previous general comment because obviously it would be useful.

For us to add any further references in order to clarify this further.

Now with regard to including during emergency contexts, I also think that's worth retaining.

That's because There is this idea that.

When states go through states of emergency, such as armed conflict, Mrs. Eidov mentioned the pandemic. So there's the idea that you have to protect non-derogable rights, such as the right to life or freedom from.

Torture, but that civic space is something which is secondary.

But even in an emergency situation preserving civil space is absolutely vital.

That's because it's the only hope that at a given point there will be a return to a peaceful or pacified society. So perhaps a peaceful is missing somewhere.

Maybe we can find a place to add it?

I think that this phrase should be retained. Essential prerequisites could be used instead of conditio sine qua non.

We find the same expression in paragraph 4. I do love Latin, but this is in fact legal jargon.

Sometimes it's not particularly useful. So I think an essential prerequisite would work better.

Last proposal came from Mr. Side of, and this is something we already discussed in March, isn't it?

And we asked in the committee, we asked Mr. Side of to further consider this.

It's not something that we incorporated into the draft because the committee didn't quite know what the legal objectives would cover. The problem with legal objectives is that it's somewhat ambiguous, and this brings me back to what Ms.

Basim was saying, because if the state says that these are not legal objectives in accordance with my legislation, then.

There could be a refusal to register an association or a ban on some association or other. So we had this discussion in March, and I have to say that I would prefer.

To leave legal objectives out of this because I think that the word legal here is somewhat ambiguous.

I think we could find a better word to cover Mr. Saidov's concern.

I think that legal would actually open up greater ambiguity more than anything else. Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [1:19:02]:

Okay, thank you very much for your explanation and your views.

There are some more interventions requested. I'll give the floor to Mr. Karatsov first.


CCPR · Member [1:19:20]:

Thank you very much. Once again, I would like to echo others in congratulating Ms. Tigruga on this excellent work. This has been very intense endeavour in the intercessional period for Ms. Tigruga and We have seen how she has managed to incorporate all the suggestions into the draft.

So this is truly remarkable work.

And I'm sure that this will also serve Helene for her future personal academic life. One morning, we change the proposal of studying the advantages and risks of the digital world. When we go into the realm of Article 22, we see how the digital world bears such an impact. And we have seen how you have remained loyal to the subject. I have to say that I have gradually warmed to the idea of the impact of the digital world on this article over the past few months. And I think that I've warmed to it because when we had the first debate this morning, we Or when we opened the debate this morning, we had a contribution from Ms. Donders.

In which she referred to the way in which we are encroaching or getting into collective rights.

And I do believe that we are moving into that realm quite.

Noticeably in the first paragraph. We talk about collective autonomy, when we talk about solidarity, we have others, when we talk about pursuing shared objectives. So we are really creating new jurisprudence and I suffered three setbacks in recent months when it came to considering collective rights. How come we still have individual communications about attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses? There is persecution of that group in certain parts of the world and it's not just one state party. These are collective rights which are being violated by different states parties.

I'm not going to dwell on this, but there was also an individual communication.

Concerning the Sami people about their collective rights.

And their ability to live as an autonomous community. So I have to say that I'm very pleased to see the minefield which we are now treading on. I think that it's very important for us to investigate this issue further in the Committee. Those who will remain on the committee, don't let anyone tell you this is a collective right and you're only here to deal with individual rights. I think that we are making excellent progress. Good luck to you. And if you want someone to push you further, then give me a call.


CCPR · Chair [1:23:57]:

I will give the floor to Mr. Casada.


CCPR · Member [1:24:06]:

Thank you, Chair.

Of course, I too would like to add my voice to the congratulations to Ellen for the excellent work.


CCPR · Chair [1:24:25]:

The speaker is a little too far from the microphone.

We'll hear him better now. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. NDA.


CCPR · Member [1:24:32]:

I would like to.

Thank the rapporteur for the excellent work which she has undertaken steering the development of this general comment. We can see her efforts reflected in the text before us today.

The first issue that I'd like to raise is that I support the.

Draft of paragraph 1, and that support includes the additions made by the rapporteur, which have already been commented on and perhaps criticised somewhat up until now. I would like to raise a small point of order on procedure. Essentially, this paragraph is the same as the one which we adopted in the first reading. Now, I don't.

Want to curtail discussion or review of this paragraph during the second reading, but. I think it would be.

Worthwhile procedure to avoid discussing what we've already adopted in the first reading.

Otherwise, we're going to have an endless debate and we won't manage to finalise this adoption in the short time we have available to do so. So I wanted to highlight that. Let's not open up things which have already been adopted.

The second issue that I would like to refer to concerns Emergency contexts. There's something which was added, and I think that it is very relevant because it is consistent with. Section 6 of the general comment. You'll see that in Section 6.

We.

Justify what we want to say because.

We believe that this is an essential prerequisite for the democratic nature of any society.

We have to say that freedom of association still applies in emergency contexts and this. Clearly reflects the committee's view of this, right.

And I think that is something which permeates the various paragraphs and.

Section. So I think that that addition should be retained and I would like to emphasize that we should not.

Re-debate the issues which we already resolved during the first reading. Thank you, Chair.


CCPR · Chair [1:27:27]:

Thank you very much.

Mr. Saidov, do you want to take the floor again? Yes, please.


CCPR · Member [1:27:37]:

Yeah.

I want to come back to my suggestion, adding the word of legal objectives.

Why?

In this document, indicated on three level of legal objectives. In para 7, it's indicated the right to freedom of association is based not only on universal and regional treaty, and declaratory instruments. In the footnote of 21, indicated around 190 domestic constitutions as regards right to freedom of association. The three levels of legal objectives, universal, regional, more than 10 regional instruments indicated in this draft. For this reason, I stressed once again, added the word of legal objectives. And in para 5, indicated the rule of covenant is a living instrument.

It's very more important.

And I think in the para of five indicated the harmony between the universal, regional, and domestic legal objectives.

Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [1:29:20]:

Thank you very much.

Now I'll give the floor to Madam Abdoulhussain.


CCPR · Member [1:29:32]:

Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. I once again like to thank Helene. I would like to support the current version of the text, and I'll explain why.

I've got four brief comments.

I have to say that I concur with what Mr. Quesada was saying.

Some issues have been thoroughly debated already, and I think that.

It would be a mistake for us to open up a debate which has already been very thorough. Now, with regard.

To autonomy, I would like to say that I support the expression collective autonomy in solidarity with others. And I believe that we should have a footnote as proposed by the Special Rapporteur on G737. When we look at freedom of association, this is in line with our autonomy and self-determination as in paragraph 19. I think that's important to retain the reference to emergency context because this is when civil space is more vulnerable. Now to attend to Mr. Toria's concern, perhaps we could add something in section six about that article. with Mr. Saidov, I understood the legal perspective, but legal in English could be understood as lawful, and this could.

Work against what we try to achieve through paragraph 45.

So perhaps we could talk about access to justice, perhaps we could talk about protection of human rights. I'll leave that up to the judgment of the rapporteur.

That's all.

Thank you very much once again, Madam Rapporteur, and I'd like to thank the colleagues also for the views put forward.


CCPR · Chair [1:31:28]:

Thank you very much.

I will give the floor to Mr. NDIA.


CCPR · Member [1:31:36]:

Thank you, Chair.

I'd like to begin by paying tribute to Ellen for the huge amount of very high quality.

Work which she has put into this general comment, which puts us in a position.

Where we can debate it, despite the very short period of time which we've had to get this far.

Elaine has shown a remarkable ability to listen to everybody, to incorporate.

The various opinions and enabling her to synthesize them so that we all feel involved.

And this is what brings me to my opinion on paragraph one.

I think there is a very simple difference between individual and collective rights, and individual rights cannot be exercised collectively.

You can't do it just by yourself. So it is the way in which individual can achieve a collective aim. So there is this harmony.

Now, the issue of what's legal and what's not, I think that.

We can be informed by Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that all the rights.

Contained herein.

I apologize, but I haven't got the text just in front of me, says the speaker, but.

We all live in a social international order in which our rights should be achieved or words to that effect. And I think that's how we should understand the references to democracy and the law.

That means to say the law should allow each individual and collective to live in a social international order in which our rights can be enjoyed. I think that's what is meant by the Universal Declaration of Rights, and this is how I understand it here as well. Thank you very much, Chair.


CCPR · Chair [1:34:03]:

Thank you very much.

It takes a lot more time than I expected, but as many members said, on the issues that we already have agreed in the first reading, I think as a chair, I cannot prevent any member from speaking their own views again. But I agree with their views in principle, because we already agreed. It's difficult to do it again in the second reading. But just keep that in mind. Sometimes you can change your mind and you can have some other views. You can raise it again. That's possible. But, you know, there's a limited time and, you know, please keep that in mind. Madam Masim.


CCPR · Member [1:35:01]:

I completely agree with your point of view, and I have a suggestion, is that we have a round of interventions on each paragraph to which Madam Tinkruja can reply. And then when we finish, we can have a second round. Otherwise, it should not go into bilateral discussions between the rapporteur and the colleagues or those who want to intervene. And also, there is the possibility that the second round of comments of the same person can go in writing and definitely it will be taken into account on the next meeting, on the next session. Thank you, sir.


CCPR · Chair [1:36:03]:

Thank you, Madame Basim.

Do you agree? So you can take the floor, Madame Tigulza.


CCPR · Rapporteur [1:36:13]:

Thank you. I have to say that I fully agree with what Mr. Quesada, Ms. Abdul Rochol, and what Ms. Basim has just said, as well as you yourself, Chair. What I propose is that we don't necessarily open up debate on issues which have already been resolved. Obviously, the text can always be fine-tuned. It's not necessarily a bad thing sometimes to reconsider what we have already debated. But in any case, I'd actually preempted Ms. Abdurachid's suggestion, including during emergency context to put C's section six in brackets there. So this means to say that the issue of derogating from rights will be dealt with later on and clarified. In fact, we come back to this issue in those paragraphs on the derogation. If the majority of the committee agree, we would retain the reference to emergency context in paragraph 1. but we would add this reference to section six. I see that the secretariat has already included Mr. Tiraiya's suggestion of replacing conditio sine qua non by essential prerequisite. Thank you, secretariat, for having already done that. I think that's an excellent suggestion.

Legal objectives. It's true, we already mentioned this.

I think that a proposal has been made, and I think this actually picks up on what Mr. N'Daye was saying about Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads as follows, and I'll say it in English.

...To a social and international order in which their rights and freedoms set forth in this declaration can be fully realized.

Perhaps what we could do is.

Avoid legal by saying rights based objectives. It's somewhat more cumbersome.

Because. The order.

Every respects human rights is in economic, social and cultural objectives. So if we can find an alternative to legal objectives for the reasons mentioned by Mr. Ms. Abdul Rochol, then we could replace it with rights based objectives. I think this would pick up on what Ms. Basim was saying.

Because. We. Don't want to. Include. those criminal associations as mentioned, but I think this will bring us into line with Article 28 as Mr. NDI was suggesting.

And we could include, in fact, a footnote there with a reference to Article 28 of the EU DHR.


CCPR · Chair [1:39:34]:

Thank you.

There is a suggestion made by the rapporteur. Okay, I see some thumbs up. So it's accepted by some members and I see no objection. So I think it is... Thank you, whoever it is, thank you very much. Okay, so let's move on to next paragraph then.


CCPR · Rapporteur [1:40:15]:

Thank you, Chair.

And I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the proponent of those words for his efforts, because that's allowed.

Us to adopt the paragraph. Now, paragraph two refers to something which cropped up a lot in the contributions.

When we.

Drafted the previous version, we didn't mention information, the right to information, and this also picks up on freedom of expression, academic freedom, and These are essential aspects of freedom of association in schools and the academic world. Ms. Donders made the proposals here, and I'd like to pick up on Ms. Basim's comment. We did have a bilateral exchange, but I think that the committee as a whole should hear these proposals. I don't necessarily need to say where they came from, Ms. Donders, every time. There aren't many changes to the paragraph. There was just that addition of right to information, and I'm sure that Ms. Donders will be able to explain her suggestion to make a reference to Article 12, which is freedom of circulation and movement.

This is because in various other places in the general comments, we're going to come back to migrant workers, but I'm sure that Ms. Donders will want to explain her proposal.


CCPR · Chair [1:42:06]:

Yes, Madame Donders.


CCPR · Member [1:42:11]:

With pleasure, thank you very much. First of all, my warmest support for including, and that won't surprise you, academic freedom and the right to information. I have a small suggestion for the colleagues. to add, I'm not sure we do it at some points but not everywhere, to also include references to work of other treaty bodies and in this particular case, on this particular point on academic freedom, we could in the footnote also refer to general comment 25 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in paragraph 46, where it explicitly links academic freedom with freedom of association, freedom of expression, et cetera, in terms of state obligation. So we're on warm grounds here, and I don't think it would be necessarily bad to refer to a general comment by our colleagues. But again, I leave it to the rest to support that. Then indeed, one of the rights, but now I'm looking again at this particular paragraph as well as the following ones, because one of the rights that indeed was not mentioned here specifically, nor particularly elsewhere, was the right to freedom of movement in Article 12 of our Covenant. Here, however, what we do say is that we facilitate, that we see the right to freedom of association facilitating and reinforcing other rights. Now, of course, you can talk about the, the sort of route, right? Does one facilitate the other? But it's also vice versa, right? Freedom of expression also facilitates freedom of association. So it's more in my way, a two way street or an interaction between them, uh, as well. So, and if you consider that, then indeed, uh, freedom of movement would fit here as well. However, we could also decide to put it elsewhere in paragraph three or four, or three, maybe not, but four could also be where we talk about broader interaction between this right and other rights. So my suggestion would be either we say in paragraph two, it interacts, facilitate and reinforces, and then we can add here freedom of movement as well. Or we say freedom of movement for elsewhere in the next coming upcoming paragraphs. Why freedom of movement in need very shortly, because we actually do talk further below about not only cross-border cooperation, which of course requires freedom of movement and, and things such as facilitating of visa and all these kind of things. But as you say rightly, Madam Rapporteur, it also concerns in-country travel or migrant workers or a specific group that may indeed enjoy that freedom or needs to enjoy freedom of movement in addition to freedom of association. So again, we could add the word "interact" here so that it's a two-way thing. I think it's not a bad thing anyways. and then add freedom of movement here, or we can keep it for another paragraph. But I think the importance is that we recognize that this is also one of the rights in our own covenant that clearly interacts with freedom of association. Thank you very much.


CCPR · Chair [1:45:40]:

Thank you very much, Madam Donders. Any other?

Mr. Zaitsev.


CCPR · Member [1:45:52]:

Yeah.

I want one concrete suggestion. At the end of this para, indicated against slavery, forced labor, or other inhuman conditions and trafficking in persons, I fully agree. But I want after the forced, added, and child labor. because this forced labour and child labour, these terms, it's very interconnections after the word forced and child labour.

Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [1:46:36]:

Thank you, Mr. Seidolf. Any other comments? Yes, Madam Tiguiza.


CCPR · Rapporteur [1:46:52]:

Thank you.

Thank you very much. I fully agree with the proposal made by Ms. Anders that when we mentioned academic freedom and then General Comment 25, we do that in several different places. And Mr. Saidov mentioned at the beginning, since we are celebrating both covenants, it'd be good to use it. And we've done this as well in other paragraphs. So that's taken into account.

Perhaps on freedom of movement, I'm wondering if this is the right paragraph to mention that.

And as I reread the last sentence, I wonder whether it's not the last sentence where we can add the reference because we mentioned article eight, but we could also mention or add something on Freedom of motion and movement. No, no, the two last sentences are very specific and they refer to trade unions, so no.

But if we cannot include it in this.

Paragraph, I keep it for later on because this paragraph here really is anchored on the very close tie between a freedom of association for the protection of civic space, freedom of association with as it's related to other rights. Assembly, belief. So perhaps I would keep it for paragraph four. I agree, it's a point that came up in the contributions many times, but it's related to right to privacy. In another paragraph that we're going to have later on, I did manage to add a right to privacy. So maybe in the paragraph where we speak about migrant workers, we could come back to this idea that their freedom of association is directly related to Article 12. And I'll see how we can manage that. Then we have a proposal made by Mr. Saidov. on forced and child labor. We can add it here.

It's okay with me.

But I think that we mentioned child labor later on as well. So, well, for the time being, we could have it here. And then if we think that it's too repetitive because it's then said on the paragraph on children, then we could choose.

Which of the two we are going to keep?

But we could have forced and child labor, sure.


CCPR · Chair [1:49:47]:

Sorry, I missed, Madam. My eyes are not wide enough to see. So please, you have the floor.


CCPR · Member [1:50:01]:

Thank you very much, Chair. Don't mind, these things happen. So my comment for the rapporteur is I support the paragraph number two.

I just have a.

Suggestion for clarification. When referring to article 18, I would like to mention that we use the text of the Covenant and say freedom of thoughts, of conscience and religion. In the text, we're just missing the word "thoughts". Thank you, rapporteur and Chair.


CCPR · Chair [1:50:30]:

Thank you very much.

Okay, so now I think we can move on now, Madame Chouza.


CCPR · Rapporteur [1:50:45]:

Thank you.

So, paragraph three, it's not a new paragraph in and of itself, because you might recall.

In the last version, we were dealing with the protection of the status of Indigenous Peoples, and that was included in paragraph two, but given that it was a bit lengthy, and that, as we said in the introduction a moment ago, the situation of Indigenous Peoples as regards, say, their government organizations and representation is sui generis.

I was suggesting that we adopt or that we renumber, that we keep pretty much the same text.

We had before with a few slight amendments, but it's by and large the same text.

Where we are mentioning that the right to the freedom of association is to be understood in a specific way with regards to indigenous peoples. That's that I understand what Madame Donders was saying a moment ago at the beginning. So I added in other paragraphs, minorities, linguistic minorities, racial, ethnic, and so on. We don't want to come off as if we're creating some sort of imbalance in Article 27 and its protection.

But here.

From the point of view of the recognition of, say, government agencies and types of association, but not just that.

We will find in the paragraphs on justice and matters of Indigenous justice and access to justice.

And for that, I would like to thank the.

Secretariat for their support because including the rights of Indigenous peoples and where to have it.

Placed here in the draft took us a long time until September, October, I believe. And the secretary had quite kindly contacted the expert mechanism on the rights of indigenous peoples to make.

Sure or to get their thoughts, their impressions, their comments.

Which would help us to have a general comment that links article 22, article 1, 25 and 27.

Madam Donders had a proposal, which seems quite reasonable to me, but I don't want to speak in her stead.

I think it's great for all colleagues to hear her proposal from her.


CCPR · Chair [1:53:26]:

Okay, thank you.

Okay, please, Madam.


CCPR · Member [1:53:37]:

Thank you, Chair. We're ping-ponging here across the room, but thank you very much. Very important paragraph. I completely agree with that. I also completely agree with the approach that we take indeed to put particular, shed particular light on the role of Indigenous peoples and their particular situation. So in there, I have no objections.

Two textual things.

It's the right of self-determination. Again, I share Madam Abdolrashid's suggestion to always stick to the language of the Covenant, even though we may sometimes have evolved in that, but the Covenant speaks of the right of self-determination, so let's use that. And then my suggestion was concretely in terms of language, including, and instead of saying land rights, saying, including rights to land and resources, because it's not only about land, I think it's nicer to have land and resources there. And then moving on in that sentence to cross out the expression of. So we then, it reads then as follows, including rights to land and resources, the effective participation of Indigenous peoples in public affairs, comma, their free, prior and informed consent in decisions that affect them. So we cross out the expression and then the right to defend and promote their cultural identity. And indeed, I think it's important, as I said in the beginning, that here we recognize Indigenous peoples as the rights holders.

Right.

We connect that to Article one, which we often do, which is also in our jurisprudence and general comments. So no problem there. We also reaffirm that Article 27, indeed, even though it speaks formally of members of minorities.

That this also applies to Indigenous peoples.

Again, this is just in our jurisprudence and also general comments on, for instance, 27. However, indeed, it would be good, and I see that we do it further down in paragraph 9 and further, we The issue of Article 27 and cultural identity and the right to defend and promote cultural identity indeed goes beyond merely Indigenous.

Peoples.

Of course, this addresses also the other minorities that we know and that we highlight now in paragraph 9. And therefore, my only suggestion could be, but again, I'm not feeling very strongly about this, to connect 3 and 9 a bit closer instead of having them now quite separate. Maybe that doesn't work, we need to look at it again. But since we mention here 125, 27, and then quite some what paragraphs later, we return to 27 in light of minorities. I think the flow could be okay doing that, because in all of these paragraphs, we highlight the links between freedom of association and other rights. So it's not, I think, for instance, number four and further down, but it might not work. So then we leave just three where it is, but perhaps also being more clear when we come to nine that we also mention other minorities as rights holders. And then again, we have to come back to the issue of group rights, because for indigenous peoples, we have always recognized them also as a group. For minorities, we have been, I think, a bit more ambivalent about that. We sometimes follow Article 27, focusing on members of minorities, sometimes on minorities as such. I think we're on solid ground to focus on collective rights and group rights, but we need to then make sure that we justify that well, also in our own jurisprudence and concluding observations, and not merely based on regional, for instance, jurisprudence, because we know the Inter-American Court on Human Rights is often much more progressive in terms of Indigenous peoples' rights, collective rights, group rights. So let us see how we can solve that, but those were my suggestions.

Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [1:57:59]:

Thank you, Mrs. Donders. Mr. Teraya.


CCPR · Member [1:58:15]:

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm not sure we have already talked in the first reading, but the in the second sentence, the here, the enjoyment, exercise, operationalization seem somewhat overlapping in meaning. I wonder whether the effective exercise, the realization would be sufficient here, or whether each of three terms is intended to convey a distinct meaning. Because the background is we have tried to insert new right and we should not be make it so complicated. We just mentioned just two. That's my idea.


CCPR · Chair [1:59:06]:

Thank you, Mr. Taraya. Any other comments? Before we move to paragraph 4, Madame Tigrude, would you like to comment?


CCPR · Rapporteur [1:59:24]:

Yes, I wanted to comment on these two statements.

Mr. Taraya, would you mind repeating your proposal? You had a good proposal, but I was unable to write it down. Effective exercise and-- And then something I didn't understand.

Anna will take the floor after that.

Thank you.

So effective exercise and realization. OK, yes. we can replace operationalization with realization. I see Madame Donders.

Would you like to speak?


CCPR · Member [2:00:16]:

Very quickly. Realization, I think enjoyment we would need because if you look at the both sides, because a state can say it's realized, but that doesn't mean that individuals enjoy. So I always like the word enjoyment because that starts from the people that actually enjoy the right. And of course, you can say if it's fully realized, it should be enjoyed, but that is not always the case. So I would say enjoyment, let's keep that. So say, what do we say? Effective enjoyment and realization. I mean, exercise is more or less the same. I agree with Mr. Tarja. This was an operationalization. It's also perhaps a bit overdone, but I would say realization and enjoyment. enjoyment. Voila, realization and enjoyment.


CCPR · Rapporteur [2:01:08]:

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I would like to propose that we keep for the enjoyment and effect of realization, because we begin with enjoyment, that is after all what determines who is the right holder.

Thank you to both of you.

So the right of self-determination We change that obviously. Also, there was no objection.


CCPR · Chair [2:01:40]:

Request from Mr. Kulkarni, so please.


CCPR · Member [2:01:50]:

Thank you, Chair. Can you please show us on the screen, please? So I'm not sure about repeating the same word twice is a good idea, full realization and realization. Full realization of the right to freedom is equally instrumental for effective realization of the right to self-determination. So probably we should substitute by another word.


CCPR · Chair [2:02:26]:

Okay. So, Madam Tigurija. They had done those first.


CCPR · Member [2:02:38]:

It's two rights, plural, to land and resources, not right.

It's not the same.


CCPR · Rapporteur [2:02:52]:

Yes, thank you.

What about effective enjoyment? Effective comes before enjoyment, I would put it after. I would say enjoyment and effective exercise instead of effective enjoyment and exercise. Yes, I think it's there. It should go.

Thank you.

Something that came up several times, and we see it in practice in jurisprudence or in dialogues we have with states, is that even if the right is recognized, it is not effectively exercised. So rights to land and resources, I think that's a very good addition, however, Our colleagues from the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights have a general comment on land, and I would like to mention it here because it's a recommendation that doesn't go far enough as regards to our own jurisprudence. The right to land is not recognized, and that's a discussion I had with our colleagues in that committee, and CESCR, contrary to their previous proposal.

Here, I think we can keep the rights of land and resources, but not.

Necessarily referring to the work done by our colleagues. And then, as regards the minorities, when we get to paragraph 9, I think we can see how to bolster that a little bit.

And as we were saying a moment ago, I think it was Madam Basim who said this.

Once we would have adopted the first section, we're going to decide if we keep that order or if we're going to change it around a bit. One of the claims that has been made by states and national institutions is something we didn't mention at all in the previous draft with regards to minorities are people of African descent. We talk about them at length in our dialogues with states, and here we didn't really mention them. they did not show up in the previous version. So that's a point that Madame Donders raised, and it's a good point, and we'll see how we can address it in paragraph 9, and then maybe we'll change the order of the paragraphs.


CCPR · Chair [2:05:10]:

Okay, thank you very much.

Now we can move to paragraph 4.


CCPR · Rapporteur [2:05:19]:

So a few.

Additions to paragraph 4. For example, right to defend human rights. It's a very important right. Which we see in practice. And also, I thought this was the right place because we don't necessarily find it later on.

I thought this was the right place to mention a set of other topics.

Such as combating inequality, extreme poverty, and so on, gender and climate justice. We see that today. Still, this is clear in the work of many special rapporteurs and in our dialogues also with states, activists and human rights defenders who are defenders of the rights of the environment. see their activities limited by states.

So a proposal, because I had added after footnote 12, I had added, "and the right to a healthy environment." And I think it would be best if we placed that A bit further up in the paragraph, when we say to promote and advocate for economic, social.

Cultural, and environmental rights, there we could add the right to a healthy, clean, sustainable environment. Because if not, we're talking about environmental rights on top, and then we come back to them again further down. I had missed that the first time around, but looking at it now, I think it's a better way of organizing these ideas in this paragraph. And if you agree too, yes, that's what I was asking for.

Thank you, Secretariat.

And also that we should move up the footnote that mentions the General Assembly resolution on that right?


CCPR · Chair [2:07:42]:

We'll open the floor.

Yes, Madam Donders.


CCPR · Member [2:07:51]:

Thank you. And I promise it won't be on every paragraph. But on this one, a very small thing on the first sentence, where we talk about an essential prerequisite for all kinds of things. I'm always a bit hesitant about the word educate because it's a bit normative, right? It has its sort of like a bit of a paternalistic sense in the sense of we educate, we teach. So I was thinking whether we could replace or at least add to inform. It's just also about sharing information, raising awareness, recognize and realize a wide range of other interest. I think that's fine. So either we keep educate, but then we could move to inform and educate about, raise awareness of, or we could just leave out the word educate and just replace it by to inform and leave it out and raise awareness, et cetera, et cetera, of course. So that would be just a small suggestion.

Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [2:08:49]:

Okay, thank you very much.

It's a good suggestion. Any other opinions? Mr. Quesada.


CCPR · Member [2:09:06]:

Thank you, Chair.

It's a request for clarification. In this paragraph, number four, We mentioned the recognition of other interests and rights.

A valuable tool.

A broad range of other wide range of other interests and rights.

Why are we talking about interests here? I'm trying to see the link.

With this and what we have said in previous paragraphs, and I don't find the link.

We're also talking about rights here, specifically.

In the rest of paragraph 4, we don't return to the idea of interests. And I also don't know if interests are made reality, if they are materialized. So maybe we could get rid of interests.

Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [2:10:15]:

Thank you very much.

Yes, Mr. Fernandez.


CCPR · Member [2:10:27]:

Could we ask the speaker to have the microphone?

Thank you.

I like the idea of having interest, but what then?

Are they public interests, general public interest?

What are we referring to when we want to complement the rights here? There are collective legal interests. Perhaps we could add something to the word interest so we know what we're talking about.

But I think it is a good idea to complement rights with something else.


CCPR · Chair [2:11:06]:

Thank you very much. Any other views, opinions?

Well, then rapporteur will solve the problem.


CCPR · Rapporteur [2:11:19]:

I was trying to see if there was an observation to general comment 37 in the meanwhile. So, okay, I'm back. Looking at the text, fully agree with the proposal. Let's begin with the low hanging fruit, Madame Donders' proposal. We can remove "educate." That came from somewhere. very academic request at some point to instruct. We don't educate, we instruct in French. There is a difference between instruction and education, but we can simplify things here.

Then on interests, I understand what Mr. Quesada is getting at.

And the idea here is to recall that associations don't necessarily have a goal to protect human rights. One might join an association for another purpose, for another reason. Because you see, I fear that if we repeat interest or something else, and perhaps interest is quite vague as a term, but we can't have cultural, artistic, and others. But I fear that if we remove the word interest, of other interests, then we're giving the impression the freedom of association can only be enjoyed if the activity it refers to is the protection of the human rights or the environment, which is not so. So I would be inclined to keep it in the document.


CCPR · Chair [2:13:00]:

Okay, thank you.

Everybody okay? Yes, Madame Donders.


CCPR · Member [2:13:09]:

Just a small suggestion to perhaps reverse the order of other rights and interests to sort of make a little bit of a difference between rights first and then perhaps also other interests thank you Mr.


CCPR · Chair [2:13:28]:

Cassata no see me oh.


CCPR · Member [2:13:41]:

My comment does not object entirely to the inclusion of the word interest but it seems to me that as worded presently it doesn't really work because Do we realize an interest like we realize a right? Like I'm thinking about the collocation, we recognize and realize rights.

Do we do that in interests?

That's what I was trying to say, that we need to find the right word that collocates with interests and rights.

Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [2:14:22]:

Thank you.

Any other suggestions from the floor? Yes, please, Mr. Igezu.


CCPR · Member [2:14:33]:

Thank you, Chair. I'm not sure. I mean, I thought both rights and interests should be included. I mean, there are interests like public defenders. And mind you, in paragraph 5, we quote our own covenant. It says, "Everyone shall have the right to freedom if you go to with others, including to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests. I mean, we use it, it's used in the covenant itself, and I think there is a protection of an interest also. So the suggestion to reverse it, I think, is fine, and maybe we should go for that. Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [2:15:22]:

Okay, Mr. Kessana, is okay with you? you want to take a floor, Mr. Casada.


CCPR · Member [2:15:45]:

No, yeah, glad it.

Well, I already made my point.

It was the question of interest.

You protect, you fight for interest, but I don't know if you realize them. I'm not sure that it's really covered by the current wording.

I won't insist if there's no better.

Wording, and I have to say I haven't got anything which jumps to mind.


CCPR · Chair [2:16:08]:

Okay, thank you. Madame Triguiza.


CCPR · Rapporteur [2:16:16]:

I see where the problem lies.

If we were to introduce the right to defend human rights and Other interests if that would resolve the problem. Don't know if there's any other way in which we can resolve this.

In English, you can say. Well, yes.

Would that resolve it if we?

Remove and interest from the previous section of the sentence. Would this be clearer and would this cover Mr. Quesada's concern? Yes, I see thumbs up. So thank you very much.


CCPR · Chair [2:17:08]:

Okay.

Is it agreeable? Up to everyone? Let me see. The right to defend the human rights and other interests.

Okay.

Okay. It's okay with me.

Okay. Okay. Thank you very much.


CCPR · Rapporteur [2:17:32]:

We can move on to next paragraph.

Thank you.

I don't think we've amended the following paragraph compared to the previous draft. I've highlighted the amendments in yellow, so I think that as I can't see any here, it's pretty much. The same paragraph we adopted in March. Obviously, the numbering has changed.


CCPR · Chair [2:18:27]:

Okay.

Yes. Larry, if I have one, please.


CCPR · Member [2:18:39]:

Thank you, Chair. And I have been quiet this morning, but please do not let that think that it is in any way a negative reflection on the very, very hard work and excellent draft that Mr. Grujic has presented. It's true, this provision has not changed, as far as I can tell, from the initial, the first reading. However, I wanted to raise two points relating to this paragraph. So, there are two types of relationships of Article 22 of the Covenant to other international instruments. One relates to other universal and regional instruments that protect freedom of association, and the other relates to international instruments in other fields, humanitarian law, environment, and so forth. And the latter we deal with in section seven, and I think that's fine. We cross-reference it here, again, that's also fine. However, I will say that this is the only place where we refer to the living instrument doctrine, as far as I can tell in the entire draft. And this is obviously a well-settled part of our jurisprudence, and it's entirely appropriate to refer to it here. The somewhat concern, the one potential concern I have here relates to the reference to the ICJ judgment on the climate change advisory opinion with a single set of compatible obligations. So I'm thinking, and I have a suggestion for where we might include it if it meets with the rapporteur's approval and the approval of colleagues, and that's the pro homine principle. and I don't mean to reference it specifically, but I mean to say that because of the living instrument doctrine, it is entirely possible that we will see freedom of association in some of its aspects evolve more expansively over time, say in the ILO as one possibility, or in the Inter-American human rights system where they're often quite expansive even more than we are. And so the concern, the potential concern I have is that in referencing the living instrument doctrine, we should also allow, we should prevent or not encourage state parties and others to be able to say, well, it's true that The rights, let's assume, in one of the international labor conventions have expanded over time, say perhaps through the Committee on Experts on Freedom of Association, let's just say. But the rights protected in Article 22 of the Covenant are narrower. So what we want to do is allow for standards to evolve in all of the other universal and regional instruments that protect this right. So how to do that? I would suggest in the third to the last line, we would add two words. So sorry, second to last line. So if I can start, must be construed and implemented by states parties in light of present day conditions. and in harmony with their evolving universal and regional obligations. I'm open to other ways of addressing this issue, but I think we should underscore a little bit more that we're not freezing this concept as we adopted in the general comment, that it will continue to evolve and that it may evolve in different ways in some of the different universal and regional instruments that protect the right to freedom of association. While I have the floor, just one more small point which we can come back to, but I'll just flag it for now. When we come to paragraph seven and we refer to domestic constitutions, I'm not sure we need a separate paragraph on that. We could incorporate that here. but we can come to that. So since it would cross reference, I wonder, that's a separate point, do we need an entire very, very short paragraph devoted to essentially repeating what we said in six and then recognized in domestic constitutions? My suggestion would be to take whatever is appropriate from there and incorporate it into paragraph six. So those are two. The first one is more substantive, more important. The second one is just for drafting procedural economy. So thank you very much.


CCPR · Chair [2:23:54]:

Thank you very much for your suggestions.

And any other, oh, Mr. Saidov, please.


CCPR · Member [2:24:05]:

Thank you, Chair. During the first reading, I proposed one suggestion regarding the original instruments. In the footnote 15, indicated European Convention on Human Rights, American Convention, African Charter, European Social Charter. Where is the OIC Declaration on Human Rights? This declaration was adopted 2020. and I am personally participated in preparing, discussing, and adoption of this declaration. This is not declaration 1990, Cairo declaration. This declaration, OIC, there are 57 member states in this organization. and I propose maybe in the footnote 15 in the indicated and this OIC declaration on human rights. This is the first suggestion. The second, I very tentatively listen, Larry, about the American theory of living constitutions. Here we indicated the covenant is a living instrument. I fully agree. Maybe I added before the instrument, but not legal instrument, maybe juridical instrument. Because after Rochelle said, when we use the term of legal, it means lawfully, maybe juridical instrument.

Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [2:25:46]:

Mr. Korikolia.


CCPR · Member [2:25:51]:

just a minor point on paragraph five, second sentence starting with right is articulate and then we have reference to international courts and monitoring bodies and says that its content has been elaborated by international courts and monitoring bodies, for example, in the judicial reviews, the judicial decisions views, concluding observations, resolutions, and interpretive guidelines. And I'm not sure whether we need to refer to resolutions, because we are talking about international courts and monitoring bodies. And resolutions are not typically adopted by international courts or monitoring bodies. So I would suggest deleting the word "resolutions." Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [2:26:46]:

Thank you very much.

Okay, I don't see. So, yeah, please, Madame Tigrusa. Mr. Teraya.


CCPR · Member [2:27:01]:

This is a very difficult part, but now the new ICJ judgment has advised opinions included in the it's always uh rethinking of the this draft I mean that the the part of the sorry the part of the the last sense is in harmony with universal and regional obligations here would be I agree with that and we should not close the possibility to progressive development, but I also think that here there are many different sources mentioned in one paragraph, and I'm wondering whether in relation to the UN Convention, Article 31, paragraph 3C, because the relevant rules of international law can be applied to the state parties in each legal instrument. So I'm not good idea, but the. Yeah, I just point out the issue.


CCPR · Chair [2:28:22]:

Thank you, Mr. Teraya. Now I see none. So rapporteur, please.


CCPR · Rapporteur [2:28:32]:

Thank you. Thank you, colleagues, for all the various contributions. Thank you very much, Mr Helfer. I think "living instrument" has been added to the draft, and if colleagues concur, then I think that there are some really useful additions which have been suggested. Perhaps at the end of the paragraph we can refer to section 7, but also section 8. So see section 7 and 8, because in section 8 we talk about pro homine and living instrument. Well, it could be going in the wrong direction if it's still living.

So I think it's important, as Mr Helfer suggested, to connect evolving with progress.

Evolving shouldn't lead to a lower level of protection. I think that, yes, we can move paragraph 7 up, but let's leave it as it is

for the time being.

When we get to paragraph 7, perhaps then we can discuss about moving it or merging it with paragraph 5. It will help us save a few words. Now, with regard to the Cairo Declaration of the IOC on human rights, we discussed this at length in March. And for many different reasons, the fact that it's an interesting and important declaration, but there are also certain passages which are not necessarily entirely compatible with universal standards. Now, I don't want to reopen the discussion we had in March, and I have to say

that my position is that I do not favor referring to it as a source.

Mr. Korkelias suggestion, yes, I'm trying to find in my notes why we included resolutions there, but I think that we can delete it. I don't think the paragraph will lose anything from losing that word. Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [2:31:04]:

Thank you, Madam Tigruza.

Any further

yes madam T


CCPR · Rapporteur [2:31:16]:

apologies I forgot to respond to the extremely comp important comment made by Mr teraya we're going to reach this when we look at the ICJ advisory opinions not just on climate change, but also on the right to strike.

The issue that's raised is something which you come

across in the ICJ advisory opinions and the individual statements made by judges or declarations made by judges.

It's been the source of great debate in the ICJ. Do we create case law? Are our views

and complementary source for interpreting international law.

I'll bear this in mind.

What I think is reassuring in international legal developments and notably through the ICJ is that in addition to very narrow legal interpretation is the fact that The ICJ regularly uses our concluding observations, even if they don't necessarily have a binding effect on states parties. But in the advisory opinion on climate change, they used our case law, our concluding observations and the concluding

observations of other treaty bodies.

We obviously come back to this when we talk about the right to strike. And I have to say that it was done fairly spectacularly in that case, because the ICJ stated that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights doesn't contain the right to strike, but subsequent practice of the Human Rights Committee enables us to state that the right to strike exists.

So the way in which we interpret

Article 22, to give it meaning, is aligned with international law in general, the law of treaties, and the recent case law of the ICJ, notably in its advisory opinions of 2025 and 2026.


CCPR · Chair [2:33:44]:

Thank you very much.

I see no other views, so I think I'll move to the next paragraph.


CCPR · Rapporteur [2:34:02]:

Thank you.

No changes to paragraph 6. I've just added something which was mentioned in one of the contributions that we received.

22, paragraph 1 would be incompatible.

Other than that, there have not been any formal or substantive changes to the paragraph.


CCPR · Chair [2:34:30]:

Thank you.

And I see no hands. So I think we can move to paragraph seven, which is something to be decided. Yes, Mr. Helfer, please.


CCPR · Member [2:34:49]:

Thank you, Chair. Just on paragraph six, I realize again, no changes. I think it's fine. I just wondered whether I believe the footnote here references our prior general comment on reservations, which it should. I assume there's no practice that where the committee has suggested whether in its concluding observations or in individual communications, an example of a reservation that we thought might be contrary to the object and purpose of Article 22? I assume not, because it's not there. But I just thought I would raise it because this is-- it's certainly useful to reiterate that a general reservation is problematic. But one could imagine that there could be restrictions under Article 22.2 that are really quite severe and thus would be incompatible with the object and purpose. So if there are no examples of concerns, then I think it's fine as it is. And I see that Ms. Tigrija is shaking her head that there are none. So I'm fine with the paragraph as it is. Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [2:36:12]:

Thank you, Mr. Helfer.

Madam Tigrija? No other, no? Okay, okay.

Thank you.

Then let's move to paragraph 7.


CCPR · Rapporteur [2:36:32]:

Paragraph 7 is this very short paragraph in which we refer to what is a very similar provision in GC 37. We say that the

legal base, legal basis of freedom of association, not just universal, regional and declaratory instruments, but also the domestic constitutions of states parties. Now, Mr. Helfer was proposing that we could possibly move this paragraph up to the end of paragraph five. I think that also makes sense. Obviously, it makes paragraph 5 a bit long, but it seems logical.


CCPR · Chair [2:37:26]:

Madam Harper, Madam Donders. Sorry.


CCPR · Member [2:37:35]:

And on that. Thank you. I would support moving it, though we may need to see what we do with the first phrase of paragraph 7, where we still base universal regional treaty and declaratory instruments. I think this is a typical one where we can trust the rapporteur to see whether some of this comprehensives go in the first part of paragraph five, where we say the right is articulated in similar terms in other universal and regional instruments. So perhaps you could combine the first sentence there, including the footnote. And then indeed, since we then focus on the content in paragraph five, elaborated by international bodies, I think we should save the link to national constitutions at the end. We cannot just squeeze it in there because then it's a bit illogical that we, of course, don't go into national and local interpretation. So I think this is better to have it inserted there, especially that first sentence. But we need to see whether it actually indeed makes sense how to do that. Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [2:38:49]:

Thank you, Madame Donders. I will give the floor to Mr. Fernandez Leza, followed by Mr. Kourkalia.


CCPR · Member [2:39:00]:

Thank you very much. Well, with regard to paragraph 7, perhaps in addition to the reference to universal and regional treaty and declaratory instruments, we could add a reference to international law in general, because whilst it's true that we haven't

gone into this because we were saying that freedom of association is covered by international law in general already.

There is this general scope regardless of the scope of treaties. So we should say it's not only based on universal and regional treaty and declaratory instruments and in international law. And then we'd have the rest of the paragraph.


CCPR · Chair [2:39:55]:

Thank you. Mr. Koriklia, please.


CCPR · Member [2:40:00]:

Paragraph seven, second sentence that refers to domestic constitutions, probably it's better to point out national constitutions instead of domestic constitutions, or just leave national at all and refer to constitutions, but I think slight preference is towards national constitutions instead of domestic constitutions. Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [2:40:27]:

Thank you.

Okay, so, Madame Tigulza.


CCPR · Rapporteur [2:40:48]:

Thank you very much. I would just like to come back to domestic constitutions first. It's generally the vocabulary which is used by the committee in its general comments. If you look at the previous one, then you'll see that there are more references to domestic constitutions rather than national constitutions.

If Mr. Korkelja would like to further explain his preference for national constitutions, that's fine, and I will check to see further.

I don't really see any problem prima facie with using national constitution. I'd also like to react to what Ms. Dondas was saying, if you agree. I think that we can adopt the paragraph once we have agreed to incorporate these references, but then what I would do is I would have to merge it into paragraph 5 and ensure that it reads well and makes sense.

I don't think we need to do that here in the room. It'd be quite difficult to work and without the necessary footnotes, but in any.

Case, I'll be able to circulate the text once it's finalized so that you can express your views on it.

With regard to international law in general, Mr. Fernandez-Llies, you'll.

Probably recall that we had a very long debate about this in March, and I was in favor of including this reference in the text.

There would be a.

Reference to the principle that the freedom of association is also protected under international law in general and is one of the principles of general international law, but a number of you said that.

The Human Rights Committee is the guardian of the Covenant and not international law in general.

Is it really correct then to have a reference to international law in general?

So.

We managed to forge a consensus on having a footnote. So the international law reference comes up in what is now footnote 20.

This refers to the case law.

Of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and its advisory opinion on the right to freedom of association and others. And For the Inter-American Court, the right to freedom of association is a general principle of international law. Now that's in paragraph, sorry, in footnote 20.

I would have preferred to have it in the text, but a number of.

You said that it's going to be very complicated. It's nothing that we've included in our practice in case law, so we can keep the reference there to the advisory opinion of the Inter-American Court, but it should not be parked in the main text, but in a footnote.


CCPR · Chair [2:44:05]:

Okay, thank you very much.

So we will entrust, in terms of merging the 7 and 5. Okay, so now I think we can move to paragraph 8.


CCPR · Rapporteur [2:44:30]:

Paragraph 8, we had a proposal from Madame Donders. of style and to have of an association at the end. Freedom of association is not conditioned by a formal state's authorization or acknowledgement of an association. That was the first proposal. And then I can say that, in my view, this is an important paragraph. It is one of the paragraphs that I built upon, strengthened it using the comments that were submitted, and also General Comment 37. We should say, time and again, reiterate to States that the fact that an association, whatever type of association it might be, that if they do not have a prior authorization or acknowledgement, that in and of itself is not a criminal offense, something to be sanctioned. And it's true that we didn't do this enough or strong enough in the last version. And the general comment on the freedom of protest, we clearly tell the states that a protest can take place without prior authorization. And we have to align the ideas and principles. That's why I don't think it changes the substance of the matter. But I would like to insist on the fact that Article 22 applies, and this is relevant for the associations we'll come across later on, the informal associations and other ones. Article 22 applies without prior state authorization. And the fact that they did not register or get authorization can never be sole grounds for punishment or sanction. So, from the recommendations we had and some of the criticism, it wasn't as clearly laid out in the previous.

Version as it is here.


CCPR · Chair [2:46:45]:

Madame Donders.


CCPR · Member [2:46:49]:

Thank you. The thing is, and I think we might need to just look at the text a bit more closely, but not necessarily now, because I really like the paragraph. The message is very clear to me, and I think I certainly support that. It's just that it's now in the first two sentences, it's a bit complicated, because we say the right to freedom of association is not conditioned by a formal state's authorization or acknowledgement, and then of what? So it has to be something because it's not only a recognition or authorization or acknowledgement of the right, it's of the association. That's why I suggested to add this. But then it becomes not so clear with the second sentence, which says, this means that no prior authorization is needed for its enjoyment and exercise. And that is, again, of the right. While I perfectly understand our message, it's about that indeed you can enjoy freedom of association without any prior authorization or acknowledgement of this freedom and therefore of the association. But let us have again, if everybody agrees with the message, we should look a little bit about the text because also I was wondering about the word formal. Is it necessary to say it's not conditioned by a formal state's authorization, or can we just say by a state's authorization? Does it have to be formal? Perhaps it's said, yeah, but informally we do this differently. So again, not to take too long on this, but the first two sentences need a bit of work, in my view. Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [2:48:27]:

Thank you.

Mr. Taraja, please.


CCPR · Member [2:48:32]:

Thank you, Chair. This is just a minor suggestion, but as a legal basis for principles of non-discrimination, in addition to Article 26, we can refer to Article 2, paragraph 1.


CCPR · Chair [2:48:51]:

Thank you.

Mr. Helfer.


CCPR · Member [2:48:57]:

Very minor point in the next line after where the secretariat is adding text. It should be intersectional discrimination, intersectional. Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [2:49:14]:

Solan, please. Madam Solan.


CCPR · Member [2:49:22]:

Thank you, Chair. I was wondering about the proposition or suggestion or analysis shared with us by Yvonne about what we are speaking about here, whether we're speaking about the right or association, because there is another sentence here. If you can follow me, somewhere in the middle. It must be a decision that the trust solely with the individuals themselves, while the authorities must enable the establishment and functioning of associations. So here we are speaking about association themselves, not about the right, as we are speaking about the right in the first two sentences. So does it go then correctly? I'm not sure also. Because first, in the first part of this paragraph, we are speaking about not asking, not allowing, in fact, a formal authorization or acknowledgement of the right. And then we are speaking about enabling of the association. So maybe they are a little bit in the collision, these two sentences, two aspects of the same paragraph. Will it be focus on the right and on the association themselves. Although, I don't know any law system that doesn't have rules or any kind of regulation about the way how to organize an association. It is always under certain normative framework. association is a formal and legal subject, so it must get under certain provisions. It cannot be just like that, while the right can be just like that for individuals. Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [2:51:15]:

Thank you.

I'll give the floor to Mr. Quesada. Mr. Quesada.


CCPR · Member [2:51:25]:

Gracias, President.

Thank you, Chair.

I wanted to speak to the point of formal associations. Is that what Madame Donders was referring to? Because we're saying that this right does not require formal state authorization or acknowledgments.

And then when we talk about a formal association, my.

Believe we're talking about those that had formal ties or relations with the state that meets formal requirements that the state has set out as a requirement for the association to be created. But we're saying that in order to enjoy and exercise this right, no authorization is needed. That is, in our view, the right is enjoyed by associations that do have formal state authorization or acknowledgment, as well as those that do not. And then we say that we can never punish a decision to carry out collective activities as part of a formal organization or opt for an informal association. I think the first part there is superfluous because if the state has granted acknowledgement to an association, because it meets a set of requirements or what have you, they're not going to be punished or sanctioned. So what we should point out here is that a decision to choose formal organization or association is not to be subjected to sanctions. Let's say the state has.

A certain legal order and they lay out certain criteria for the creation and operations of an association. and then that association is established in another way, the state's not going to punish them for having assembled. What they may do, and we do want to raise a red flag and say they cannot do this.

Is for associations that did not meet the requirements for formal recognition. So I think that first part is superfluous here and should be removed.

Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [2:53:58]:

Thank you, Mr. Quesada.

I give the floor to Madame Donders.


CCPR · Member [2:54:06]:

Thank you, and sorry for taking the floor again, but just to respond to Mr. Quesada's question that referred to me. Indeed, I was only talking about the first sentence where we link the formal to the state's authorization, which can be formal, informal. Indeed, the rest of the part is there. I fully agree with your assessment on the formal organization or informal association. I just think the message of this paragraph is clear. I think that is indeed part of our jurisprudence, well established. But I think we need to work on this in terms of the language. I'm not sure we can cross out that first whole part, as Mr. Quesada just mentioned. I do think we are mixing up a little bit of what do we mean by recognition and acknowledgement of what and at what particular moment. And indeed, the word formal that we use for that, the state's authorization, but then also for the, as an addition to the organizations themselves, which may be confusing for people to read. And as we said in the beginning, let us try to be as clear as possible within the limits that we have. But I think this might be one. Again, I totally agree with the message, so there's no doubt about that. But I think we could tweak a little bit with the language. Question is, should we do it now or should we just again entrust it to the rapporteur to bring it back to us at some point and then we can adopt it. I don't think it's a very difficult thing to do, actually, but it just needs a bit of brainpower. And it's always difficult after two and a half more than hours of this discussion.

Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [2:55:46]:

Thank you very much.

My suggestion for that is we entrust the rapporteur and fix it and bring it back to us and we'll talk later. Okay, I'll give the floor to Madam Abdoul Rahoual.


CCPR · Member [2:56:03]:

Thank you very much, Chair. I fully agree with you. And I take a note of these three ideas first, the right is not subjected to state authorization as a condition. Then that the decision to act through an informal association or unregistered association cannot in and of itself be grounds for sanctions as general comment 37 states and third that this does not preclude a legal framework or a Registering according to article 22 paragraph 2 so in line with what you have said in a chair I believe and this is I.

Believe the line of the rapporteur as well We can submit our proposals to her and I.

Trust that she will know how to adapt them into the text.

Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [2:56:45]:

Okay, thank you very much.

We shall move to the next. Yeah, paragraph nine.


CCPR · Rapporteur [2:56:57]:

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And it is an important paragraph, so.

It's worthwhile to pause for a moment and thank you, Madame Abdou-Rahoule, for having so clearly summarized the three main thrusts that we have in this paragraph. And I will be working based on what you have said and come back with a revised proposal. So paragraph 9 is also an important paragraph because here it is the only paragraph and, well, it is a bit lengthy, but it is the only place in which And I should say that some things were changed between the March version and here, but the substance remains the same. But as I was saying, it's the only paragraph in which we really speak of holders and inequality, different right holders that enjoy the rights to different levels for a variety of reasons and factors. They could be historical or structural or what have you.

But it lacked the idea that, and we know this, we often bring it up in our.

Dialogues and jurisprudence, that exercising these rights has, say, different effects depending on the social group, ethnicity, the language that is spoken, the age of the individual, disability, and so on. And it is for that reason that several things were added.

We added some categories.

And perhaps, as Madam Donder suggested, here we can flesh out minorities, where we said members of ethnic, religious, and linguistic minorities. Then people of African descent, the point that I brought up earlier, which has shown up in several contributions, and I We read the work of CERD, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and older persons.

The UN presently is working on a convention on the rights of older persons.

So I need not to review and rehearse every single category. The only category that now Madame Lenarte mentioned about this is the only category. We talked about this in March, and I said, I haven't given this enough thought. We ended up withdrawing the expression "sex workers" because Madame Lenarta was saying quite rightly, well.

The committee has never actually taken a position on sex workers and prostitution, human and sexual trafficking.

And the reason that I'm now proposing we reintroduce it, and this is based on several consultations

and information we have had, reports and conversations I've had, is that quite often, sex workers.

Is a term for self-identification. There are many countries in Southeast Asia, primarily, and I was able to speak with certain NGOs and some sex workers who said, "Well, for us, the term is important, and if you take that away from us, we become invisible. And so we are discriminated two or three times over. Many states have very murky legislation on prostitution, sex work, and I do not believe that our committee should delve into these matters. We've never worked on this in the past, and here, by using this terminology, we are not.

Trying to take a position on this either. I was respecting the principle of self-identification.

When you have a group of people that identify themselves with a certain term, in this case sex workers, and who cannot defend their rights for many reasons, because they might be undocumented or they are in some gray area, their rights are not recognized and so they suffer from two or three fold of vulnerability. So just a moment ago, Madame Menarte was suggesting in an effort to strike a balance or some sort of balance on this point to add terminology. I believe it's best that at this point we give her the floor later to express what her suggestion was. But I would like to keep this because when we get to work and trade union rights and Association you'll see that the type of work that is established or accepted and the danger to which and risk that people are exposed to our significance and here we're not just talking about the right to strike but also threat to the right to life and slavery trafficking of human beings and the list goes on so chair that's In a nutshell, paragraph nine. Oh, wait, one more significant category we ought to add, human rights and environmental defenders. And this also in light of the development of events, we see attacks and repression presently. And so we could add after environmental defenders, we could add activists and environmental defenders, activists, environmental defenders and activists. And that then reflects the situation we see presently in the civic space.


CCPR · Chair [3:02:55]:

Okay, thank you very much.

I will give the floor Mr. Carazo, followed by Mr. Hernandez and Serran.


CCPR · Member [3:03:10]:

In my country, we say, what a mess.

Things are tangled up.

When we have taken all these threads, put them in the same basket, and then, like we have tried this morning, bring in new threads, and if we have the same thing tomorrow, new threads, and then in a few months, some more, and we'll have a tangled up, messy ball of yarn. And I'm concerned that integration as right holders, holders of this very fundamental right, be preferentially, then, not sure if preferentially is the fitting word here, but people that are unequal people who have been impacted by actions or omissions by the societies in which they live or to which they arrive. And that in so doing, we are watering down the rights of association of all people. In March, we talked and I haven't had time to review this because I don't exactly remember where this was.

But we had the right of association to belong to clubs, social clubs, sports clubs, business sector clubs.

These are not unequal. They do not require protection of rights because they have the right of association as a foundational principle, which is why the first line of this article is quite appropriate. Thinking about, well, it says, "While Article 22 applies to everyone, everyone, every person." In the English version, though, I'm not clear what is meant by "interferences of the right." Perhaps an English speaker could tell us whether that "of" is the right thing to have there, if it goes there. It just thinks to me that it's not. I would think it's interference in the right that may have led to differentiated categories and also other social and economic reasons. Later on, we say that historically and structurally discriminated groups and peoples. So then we mention that someone has to be disadvantaged in order to be associated here. That someone has to be discriminated against in order to belong to one of these categories. And then we begin this list. I'm not exactly sure how many categories we have.

60.

70.

We say particularly affected individuals include, and then we have this list, a list that may be endless. And so I'm wondering about the inclusion of people in cooperatives and for-profit organizations. organizations that pool efforts to carry out activities. Thinking of people that would get together to define an area in the market and then arrive there every Sunday and have those specific spots.

Do they have a right to get together for that and even exclude me?

From occupying that public area on a Sunday market because they formed an association to claim that street segment. And so I was wondering about cooperatives and for-profit associations. These are just questions I have and I don't have answers for them.


CCPR · Chair [3:09:44]:

Remind that there are five minutes to go. I give the floor to Mr. Fernandez de Tejada.


CCPR · Member [3:09:57]:

Thank you very much.

I understand that the list of vulnerable people should be open. When we refer to minorities, though, I think we should use the terminology of the 1992 declaration, which speaks of national, cultural, ethnic, religious, and linguistic minorities. And then, we're also missing the poor. There is a rapporteur for poverty and human rights. It's something we tend to forget, but the rapporteur on poverty and human rights, it's something we should include also.


CCPR · Chair [3:10:44]:

Solan, please. Madame Solan, first.


CCPR · Member [3:10:51]:

It's my turn now, yes. well-being a woman, I hope that I will not be misunderstood, but looking at this paragraph, I do not feel really comfortable about women being listed at the first place. we are speaking about affected individuals, among others, women, then especially women human rights defenders, women journalists. On the first glance, it seems for me as a collision with the principle of equality, because why not men, men journalists, men human rights defenders? But if we still tend to keep women as a specifically vulnerable group in certain situations, then I would suggest to move from the first position into the position where we speak, we release children, young people, elderly persons, then that women would fit, from my point of view, better in that part than to start this list with women. me as a woman, I do not feel that endangered to be in a group. That's the first group that should be listed as endangered group.


CCPR · Chair [3:12:11]:

Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Madame Donders, followed by Mr. Quesada.


CCPR · Member [3:12:17]:

Thank you. And I think this is perhaps where we also, again, should stop at some moment, and because this also requires a bit more work, because I agree with both of my neighbors, actually. Because here again, we mix a bit different backgrounds of what we want to say. So we spoke about restrictions and interferences that may be different for different groups. And then we link that also to discrimination, historically and structurally discriminated. But that's different things. It's discrimination. That is an item. But it could also be certain restrictions and interferences that are not necessarily also discriminatory or they might. that also have this effect. But thirdly, and what is missing here is what we do have in the earlier paragraphs for, for instance, indigenous peoples, is that they're positively seen as rights holders, whereby sometimes a variety of rights may be needed and different obligations may be needed. So it's not only remedying things that go wrong, as we seem to suggest here, but it's also that states may have different obligations that we come back to also I think later, but that is something I think we should therefore be very clear in the first part what we actually are referring to here. Secondly, indeed, listing is always difficult because you risk to leave out, to too much emphasize, to have a different order. I also indeed suggested to the rapporteur to add people living in poverty, for sure, so that's why I agree. But also I was thinking about something, a group that we also very often discuss in our dialogues, it's the Roma. the travelers, Sinti, as well as, and I then want to think about, should we mean, do we mention only indigenous peoples or also tribal peoples? It's all those things, if you start adding, it's difficult, but I think if we want to be as inclusive as possible.

We should try our best to do so. Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [3:14:16]:

Okay, Mr. Quesada, please.


CCPR · Member [3:14:23]:

Mr. President.

Thank you, Chair.

I'll try to keep it brief. First, there's no reference made to refugees, talking about internally displaced persons, migrants, asylum seekers, and especially vulnerable categories of refugees.

They even have their own statutes.

So we shouldn't forget to include them here.

I also understand Rodrigo's concern.

Here we have a very long list, but there are people and circumstances, situations that could also be included. And I think that's not remedied by simply saying among others or in particular or especially because There may be categories that to our eyes are very relevant and should still be included.

But I don't know if this list was put together following a certain order or a system. How is this list structured?

Or is this a list to which we added items as they were mentioned progressively throughout our discussions? And if that's so, and we just tack the most recent suggestion to the end, I don't think that's the best way of doing it.

And when having a list such as this one, I think it's.

Important to remember that a general comment is, by and large, a product of our own experience, our own jurisprudence on previous general comments, based on our decisions, our concluding observations.

And the international jurisprudence of other international bodies, courts, and tribunals. So I think that when we include a category of people or groups, that it should.

As much as possible, be grounded first on our own committee's jurisprudence. If in some of our decisions or general comments, we refer to these people or these groups. That's good because we don't just want it to be a list with items that we pulled out of thin air and just any category that any of us thinks up will be added.

Of course, these are people that are particularly vulnerable, disadvantaged.

Sure.

But I say it again, we have to tie it into.

Our own jurisprudence or the international jurisprudence, and it can't just be something up there floating in a vacuum. And that's just a suggestion for the rapporteur.

Thank you.


CCPR · Chair [3:17:19]:

We will have to stop here. Thank you, interpreters, for allowing us more time. So we'll continue in the next general comments meeting from paragraph nine. and have a nice lunch and we will have another public meeting at 3 o'clock. It's a review of Austria. So have a nice lunch.

Thank you very much.