At the UN General Assembly, TB-Net and other organisations (including Amnesty International, the Geneva Human Rights Platform (Geneva Academy), the International Service for Human Rights, and the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights), raised the need to support the development of predictable review calendars and sustainable funding of the UN’s human rights treaty bodies, in a joint statement delivered at a side event on 17th October.

Read the statement

As part of the Treaty Body Strengthening process, one of the key recommendations of the co-facilitators’ report was the development of a predictable review calendars for all States parties, which all treaty bodies agreed to establish.

We seek a treaty body system that has adequate resources to support all mandated activities, that ensures regular reporting by States parties, and that promotes coherence and strengthened implementation by States of their human rights obligations by:

• Encouraging the Secretary-General to request additional regular budget funding for the treaty body system and supporting future requests for funding for the treaty bodies in the Proposed Programme budget for 2024;
• Supporting OHCHR’s request in its annual appeal for 2023 for extrabudgetary resources to improve the arrangements for the Petitions Unit; and
• Taking intergovernmental actions that clearly convey States’ support for the predictable reporting calendar approved by the Chairpersons, including by welcoming the Secretary General’s new biennial report on the treaty body system in the resolution on the treaty body system that the Third Committee will consider in the coming weeks.