Skip to Content
Home

UN Reporting – Brunei Darussalam

The conventions have cyclic systems of reporting: states submit a report each 4-5 years to the committee of independent experts, which responds with a set of questions issued to the state. A face-to-face meeting then takes place in Geneva and a final set of concluding recommendations or observations on the status and rate of implementation is issued. All this takes place in public. This current system of many different committees and reporting cycles does produces a lot of paper and can be a huge burden on national civil services, and leave much room for deference and delays. But it also provides many opportunities for civil society: to either work with the state, or to produce a critical shadow report which will always be considered by the committee; and to use both the process and the observations to “name and shame”, keeping up and renewing due pressure on the state.

The United Nations system, begun in 1945 with the UN Charter, depends on the participation by states, as signatories to treaties, as authors of reports on the progress and rate of implementation of rights, and as parties to face-to-face meetings and recommendations. The UN works both as a peer system (via the Universal Periodic Review), where states judge and place pressure on each other - or avoid doing so for political reasons – as well as a system of independent experts (via the committees of the various conventions), who examine, interpret and commend or criticise the efforts of countries to fulfil their obligations against the background of the normative texts and the internationally binding law.

The international legal system has the state at its centre: the state ratifies treaties and thereby obliged itself to respect, protect and fulfil human rights. The one that is of central importance to these pages is the right to education. And it is the state that must report on its own implementation and who can be “named and shamed” in public for not doing so. Treaties specify mechanisms for how the international community can hold the state to account, frequently through exerting pressure from above, and therefore such mechanisms can be very powerful. However, they can also become overtly politicised at the UN or regional fora. It is the challenge of campaigners and the courts to place this power in the hands of those whose rights have been violated by the state.

 

 

 

For all UN human rights documents, visit: The Universal Human Rights Index (www.universalhumanrightsindex.org)

The number of UN documents is ever-growing, but many of them can be extremely useful to campaigners. The Right to Education Project cannot keep track of this. So we refer you to the UN’s database for identifying what fits your specific interest or campaigning needs.

The Universal Human Rights Index gives this access. The index is based on the observations and recommendations of the following international expert bodies:

(1) Committees of independent experts of the treaty bodies monitoring the implementation of the core international human rights treaties (since 2000)

(2) Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council (since 2006) – both country and thematic reports, see especially under education, minorities, gender etc

Therefore please do take your time to search The Universal Human Rights Index. It is available in 6 languages.

Simple searches can be carried out directly on the home page. Documents can be searched by entering a keyword, a country, a body or a right, or any combination of these elements.

The advanced search link makes it possible to refine searches by: combining criteria (e.g. several countries, bodies or rights at the same time); combining keywords; using ‘affected persons’ as a criterion; by the year of publication; or by symbol.

What to look for?

We recommend that you either look at the references to education/gender/minorities/discrimination etc in the concluding observations by the committee, in order to use these views in your campaigning.

Furthermore, you should visit the individual committees, to keep track of when your country is next up for review, if a report has recently been posted and when it therefore is opportune to produce a civil society shadow report to counter-balance the official state report.

The major committees dealing with education rights and non-discrimination are:

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR)

The Human Rights Committee (HRC, dealing with the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights)

The Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC)

Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD)

Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)

Committee on Migrant Workers (CMW)

Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)