V. THE EGYPTIAN GOVERNMENT’S POSITION REGARDING THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL

The Egyptian government has reacted negatively to the suggestion to form a Human Rights Council since this idea was first put forth in December 2004, both on an individual country basis and through regional groups where Egypt exercises notable influence. Despite some modifications to the Egyptian stance within the last six months, it has retained its original attitude of opposition, in principle, to most of the proposals. Egyptian officials have presented numerous reasons why they oppose the creation of the Council and these will be summarized below.  However, the real reason underlying the Egyptian government’s negative stance is clear: namely, the desire not to have an independent and effective international organization documenting human rights violations and protecting actual or potential victims.

The following section provides a review, analysis and commentary on the elements that comprise the Egyptian position. It looks in particular at Egypt’s a) general opposition to the concept of establishing a UN Human Rights Council; b) attempts to resist the supervisory and protective function of the Human Rights Council; c) attempts to resist the independence and effectiveness of the Special Procedures; d) attempts to limit NGO participation; and e) attempts to derail the negotiations for establishing the Human Rights Council.

a) General Opposition to the Concept of Establishing a United Nations Human Rights Council

Egypt in general does not welcome the conversion of the Commission on Human Rights into a Human Rights Council.

Counselor Ihab Gamal el-Din, Head of the Human Rights Department, Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs⁴⁷

This short statement sums up the Egyptian position regarding efforts to strengthen the position of the Commission on Human Rights within the United Nations so that it can enjoy wide-ranging powers and overcome its current deficiencies. Officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs began vocalizing this negative position when the Council was first suggested as a replacement for the Commission on Human Rights in the report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. Egypt therefore began resisting the formation of the Council even before the publication of the UN Secretary-General’s report “In Larger Freedom.” On 6 April 2005, Egypt’s Permanent Representative to the UN in New York, Ambassador Maged Abdel-Fattah, stated before a UN General Assembly session that:

[T]he proposed new council appears to reduce the responsibilities of the Commission on Human Rights, and change the governmental nature of the process of international supervision in the field of human rights, especially since the scope of responsibilities of the proposed council, and its relation to other related organizations, are still mysterious.⁴⁸

As the ideas around the establishment of the proposed Council and its future powers began to materialize, the Egyptian position became more vocal. On 19 April 2005, after the publication of the Secretary-General’s report, his subsequent speech before the Commission on Human Rights, and his explanatory report in which he presented a proposed mechanism for peer review, Ambassador Abdel-Fattah presented Egypt’s statement to the General Assembly session devoted to the discussion of the human rights section of the Secretary-General’s report. Abdel-Fattah said:

The initial reading of the supplementary note circulated by the S.G. leads us to conclude that such a council, with its suggested functions does not necessarily enhance our mutual efforts to promote better respect for human rights, for there is no guarantee that the same structural and functional problems pertaining to the Commission of Human Rights will not be automatically subsumed in the new structure, even if it were to take a peer review format.⁴⁹

The Egyptian Permanent Representative’s official statement ended by emphasizing that “the choice to reform the Commission appears to be the best alternative at this stage, rather than establishing a new entity and performing exhausting labor to render it effective on a coordinatory basis.”

The Egyptian position does not differ substantially from the stance of the regional groups to which Egypt is a member. The African group’s statement, delivered by Ambassador Naela Gabr, Egypt’s Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva, before the meeting of the Commission on Human Rights on 12 April 2005, described the reforms proposed by the Secretary-General as “cosmetic.” ⁵⁰  Similarly, a paper issued by the representatives of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) described the proposed change from the Commission on Human Rights to the Human Rights Council as “simplistic and politically unsustainable.”⁵¹

When asked by EIPR researchers about the reason behind Egypt’s unwelcoming attitude towards the new Council, the Head of the Human Rights Department at the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that, “from the Egyptian viewpoint, the new Council will lead to more politicization, not the reverse, and it will not solve the Commission’s current problems.”⁵²  However, as the next section will show, the Egyptian stance regarding the Council is in line with its other positions regarding similar issues at the UN. Overall, Egypt seems less concerned with addressing the Commission’s problems than with resisting the establishment of a new entity that enjoys the power to monitor states’ implementation of their responsibilities to respect human rights and to protect individuals’ rights from violation. A number of nations, including Egypt, have achieved no small measure of success in imposing their control over the Commission and ensuring that it has no real impact. Egypt appears concerned that the new Council will prove to be an entity that cannot be controlled or contained, and which will therefore directly impact Egypt’s response to human rights issues.

b) Attempts to Resist the Supervisory and Protective Function of the Human Rights Council

A number of countries, including Egypt, are apprehensive of the new international initiative of moving human rights beyond mere moral promises and written agreements and into the area of real protection and effective implementation. Over the last fifty years, a number of international human rights treaties have been concluded that are legally binding on states parties. The human rights community is now focused on ensuring that these treaties are effective and that violations are prevented either before they occur, or responded to immediately. States such as Egypt clearly see the establishment of the Council as the embodiment of this worrisome trend towards protection and implementation. They have therefore attempted from the start to preserve the Commission in its current form with only minor changes. Failing to achieve this goal, they have striven to weaken the new entity and to strip it of any protective or supervisory role. Such motivations clearly underpin Egypt’s negative official attitude towards establishing the UN Human Rights Council.

The Egyptian government accuses the Commission on Human Rights of politicization and double standards, and of singling out developing countries for condemnation of their human rights abuses. These criticisms are largely true, as the first part of this report has shown; in fact, there is universal agreement that these shortcomings do exist and that they constitute an impediment to the Commission’s effective functioning. However, Egypt and other countries that fear the protective role of international human rights bodies, have never suggested any replacement system that would report on and condemn violations within states and respond as necessary. Indeed, Egypt and others have taken a stance that fundamentally opposes such rigorous monitoring and questioning of state action.

These states would rather see the role of any human rights body within the UN limited to specific tasks that do not involve supervision of states and protection of human rights. For example, they would prefer the Commission to focus on promoting human rights values and offering technical assistance and capacity-building in the field of human rights when requested by the state’s government. Or they would encourage the Commission to conduct general discussions on the subject of human rights without mentioning specific conditions within states, or to write declarations, agreements and charters for ratification by the UN General Assembly. This important international organization would thus abandon any role in monitoring, preventing or opposing states’ violations of their citizens’ human rights. In this case, the Commission, or the Council once founded, would simply hold discussions and issue recommendations with no guarantee of implementation.

Taking this stance as its starting-point, Egypt and its allies have rushed to reject – or at least cast doubt upon – the suggestion of establishing a peer-review mechanism in the new Council, although it seems, at first glance, a logical solution to the problems complained of by Egypt and its allies.⁵³  If the problem is selectivity and double standards in choosing the countries whose human rights records are subject to review, the solution surely lies in subjecting all nations equally to periodic review, without criteria that might be politicized, and starting with the Council member states themselves.

What is even more baffling regarding the Egyptian position is that Egypt had no objections to the peer-review process when it was suggested under the umbrella of the African Union as part of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), which Egypt joined on 9 March 2004. Indeed, the Egyptian government even hosted the African Peer Review Summit in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh in April 2005. The summit was attended by President Hosni Mubarak who made a reference to the peer-review process in his opening speech as evidence that African nations had “started an irreversible process of political reform and democratisation.”⁵⁴  Why, then, would Egypt voluntarily join a peer-review group with such enthusiasm in the African Union and then reject it with equal enthusiasm at the UN?

When EIPR researchers posed this question to Counselor Ihab Gamal el-Din, Head of the Human Rights Department of the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he gave two reasons for this opposition: first, that this mechanism constitutes a duplication of the functions of UN human rights treaty bodies, to which countries are already obliged to present a periodical report on their implementation of the treaties; and second, that the integration of this mechanism in the African Union is still experimental and has not yet been proven effective. A third reason was offered by Egypt on behalf of the Arab group during the unofficial consultation session held by the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva on 20 June 2005 on reform of the UN human rights system, which pointed to “the possible difficulties in implementing the concept in a neutral, unbiased and non-politicized way.”⁵⁵

Egypt’s first reason has been refuted by the Secretary-General in his explanatory note to the General Assembly concerning the Human Rights Council. According to the Secretary-General, the reporting procedures under human rights treaties serve a different function from the proposed peer-review mechanism. The former arise because states chose to ratify treaties and thereby undertake certain legal commitments to protect human rights.  Independent expert panels then undertake “close scrutiny of law, regulations and practice with regard to specific provisions of those treaties.”⁵⁶  These experts then make “specific and authoritative recommendations for action.” ⁵⁷ In contrast, the peer-review mechanism would involve states voluntarily entering “into discussion regarding human rights issues in their respective countries, and would be based on the obligations and responsibilities to promote and protect those rights arising under the Charger [sic] and as given expression in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” ⁵⁸ Rather than issuing “specific and authoritative recommendations,” the implementation of the findings of the peer-review mechanism “should be developed as a cooperative venture.”⁵⁹ Overall, the Secretary-General stated that the peer-review mechanism would complement, rather than replace, the role of treaty bodies.

As for the second reason, the EIPR does not view the novelty of the African Union’s peer-review mechanism as a convincing justification for opposing the implementation of a similar mechanism at the UN level. On the contrary, the UN’s adoption of this mechanism may be seen as complementary to that of the African Union, which came up with this idea as a basis for a process of self-criticism practiced by member states within a governmental institution, to ensure transparency, follow-up and continued motivation for development. Also, the implementation and success of the peer-review process within the new Human Rights Council would be a strong motivating force for African countries to make the new mechanism work within the African Union, whilst exchanging experiences between these two organizations.

As for the third reason, neither Egypt nor the Arab nations have presented any evidence to support their claim that the new peer-review mechanism will be biased or politicized, or that it will implement different review standards for large or developed nations. On the contrary, developing countries will have the ability to challenge any potential biases by ensuring that they themselves utilize the new mechanism to scrutinize the human rights records of both developed and developing countries. The developing countries could also set a good example and precedent by voluntarily submitting to periodical review.

Moreover, Egypt’s claim that it opposes the creation of the new Council and a peer-review mechanism in part because of the possibility of politicization and bias is a statement that is weakened by the way in which Egypt has, itself, acted within the Commission. The Egyptian government has participated in the politicization of the Commission on a number of occasions. For example, during the last session of the Commission in 2005, Egypt abstained from voting in favor of a resolution that demanded the US open the Guantanamo Bay detention center to UN human rights inspectors to monitor the situation of the detainees in the prison. The Egyptian government took this stance despite the fact that there are Egyptian prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay without charge or trial. When EIPR researchers asked the Head of the Human Rights Department at the Ministry about the failure to support the resolution, he answered that the Egyptian government had taken this position due to “political considerations.”⁶⁰

The real reason behind the Egyptian government’s opposition to a system that calls upon all countries without exception to open their records to evaluation, criticism and recommendation is that one of the goals of this mechanism is to ensure that the countries seeking membership in the new Council have a genuine desire for positive interaction with the Council and for working towards strengthening and protecting human rights. The proposal scheduled for presentation to the heads of UN member states in September 2005 stipulates, so far, that a mandatory requirement of membership in the Council should be the review of a state’s human rights situation for the duration of its membership. This will mean, for the first time, that membership in the Council will be inseparable from responsibility, and will not offer privileges so much as impose obligations. Such requirements will make it possible to exclude countries that only wish to obtain membership to protect themselves from criticism and to undermine the Council’s independence and efficiency.

Overall, Egyptian resistance to the creation of an effective Human Rights Council was almost inevitable: the Egyptian government has long viewed the Commission on Human Rights’ supervisory and protective role with hostility. Under Item 9 of the Commission’s annual meeting agenda, entitled “Violations of Human Rights and Basic Freedoms Anywhere in the World,” the Commission is empowered to examine internal human rights situations within countries. Item 9 was one of the most important weapons in the Commission’s arsenal for bringing deplorable human rights conditions in a given country to the attention of the UN, and of the world, and pressuring the country in question to rectify the situation. Egypt, however, has persistently voted against any decision based on this Item, as it is opposed in principle to the issuance of resolutions concerning human rights within a given country. In this way, Egypt and its allies within the Commission managed to weaken and dilute this mechanism and limit its scope of application. At the last annual session of the Commission, Egypt’s permanent delegate to the UN in Geneva declared that Item 9 of the agenda was “the article that is most provocative of confrontation and political discord” and condemned the way in which the Commission placed “political pressure upon nations by defaming them in international assemblages.” ⁶¹ Based on these objections, Egypt proceeded to vote against Commission resolutions condemning human rights violations in Belarus, Cuba and North Korea.

When the EIPR asked the Head of the Human Rights Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs whether Egypt was opposed in principle to a UN body observing the human rights situation and working towards protecting rights, the Egyptian official said he was frustrated with what he called “the litigation approach to international relations.” This approach, he said, was evident from the over-emphasis on mechanisms of implementation and obligation.  EIPR researchers took this answer as an affirmation of Egypt’s opposition.

c) Attempts to Resist the Independence and Effectiveness of the Special Procedures

The special procedures of the Commission on Human Rights – consisting of Special Rapporteurs, Independent Experts, and Working Groups appointed by the Commission on Human Rights – are some of the Commission’s most important procedures for monitoring human rights developments. Such monitoring is achieved through the experts’ reports, field visits to states and documentation of individual complaints received year-round. The experts also participate in conferences and their activities attract the interest of the media.

The number of independent experts appointed by the Commission has increased as their role has become more important and necessary, so that they now number more than forty.  In 2004, these experts presented over one hundred reports to the Commission on Human Rights, with information on human rights developments in thirty-nine countries which the experts had visited throughout the year. In the same year, the experts sent more than 1,300 reports to 142 countries that addressed information contained in 4,448 individual complaints.⁶³

Despite the weakness of these experts’ monitoring procedures – traceable to the dearth of human and financial resources available to the High Commissioner for appointing experts, as well as the fact that they work on a volunteer, part-time basis – their valuable contribution to the Commission’s work has become its most important aspect. This may be what has motivated all the initiatives for UN reform to emphasize that the proposed new Human Rights Council needs to preserve the special procedures system. The independence and professionalism of most of these experts have led to significant developments in international human rights law. Unfortunately, some countries have responded to these achievements by refusing to cooperate with the special procedures, and by doing all they can to weaken and limit the effectiveness of the experts.

Egypt has been one of those countries. Despite being relatively cooperative with the queries and correspondence of Special Rapporteurs and Independent Experts, it has never allowed any of them to visit the country to monitor the human rights situation and present recommendations for improvement to the government. One of the UN Special Rapporteurs who remains barred from entry to Egypt is the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, who for nine years has repeatedly asked the government to allow him to conduct a field visit, with no response so far.

The negative Egyptian attitude to independent experts stems from the Egyptian government’s erroneous belief that a country’s reputation is damaged when experts examine and present conclusions and recommendations on the human rights situation in a given country. The government therefore refuses to cooperate with UN human rights investigators who operate out of a sincere desire to improve the internal situation.

The government’s refusal to allow a number of Special Rapporteurs to visit Egypt and study the human rights situation has not stopped the latter from devoting part of their reports to narrating and analyzing the complaints that they receive regarding human rights abuses in Egypt, and from including the Egyptian government’s response to such complaints. In 2005, for example, complaints about the Egyptian government were mentioned in twelve of the reports produced by the Commission’s investigators. These complaints covered abuses relating to torture, extrajudicial executions, the rights to health, housing, arbitrary detention, independence of the judiciary and lawyers, freedom of belief, freedom of expression, forced disappearances, violence against women, and the situation of human rights defenders. ⁶⁴ This list provides a further explanation for Egypt’s efforts to weaken special procedures within the Commission and in the new Human Rights Council.

Most prominent among these attempts to weaken special procedures was the joint paper issued by representatives of the OIC, led by Egypt, Pakistan, Iran, and Sudan.  This paper addressed UN human rights reform and included a long list of proposed modifications to the human rights system within the new Council. One key concern was the desire to reduce or eliminate the effectiveness of UN independent experts. The paper suggested that the experts should focus more on international cooperation and capacity-building in the field of human rights, rather than “targeting countries.” Other suggestions made in the paper made it clear that the overall aim of the OIC countries was not to improve the special procedures system but to dismantle it altogether.  The paper, for example, called for: 1) the selection system to be restricted so that experts were only selected from regional groups; 2) the placement of complex restrictions upon acceptance of individual complaints with a view to reducing them and limiting the ability of individuals to ask for the intervention of independent experts; 3) the creation of rules that would prevent Special Rapporteurs contacting the press or other organizations; and 4) tighter regulation of the cooperation between the experts and the General Assembly.⁶⁵ 

This uncooperative position is not new to Egypt. Last year, Egypt voted in favor of nineteen modifications proposed by Cuba to the resolution on human rights and special procedures presented by the Czech Republic in 2004. As in the OIC joint paper, these nineteen modifications included a group of suggestions aimed at weakening the role of independent experts. However, these modifications did not receive sufficient votes to pass.⁶⁶ 

It is noteworthy that the position of the OIC, which opposes the special procedures as outlined above, differs from the stance of the African group to which Egypt is also a member. In the unofficial consultation session held by the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva on 20 July 2005 on the subject of UN human rights reform, the African group emphasized “the importance of preserving the strengths of the Commission with regard to special procedures.” ⁶⁷ It appears that Egypt has chosen, in this point in particular, to take the side of the extremist position held by the OIC, and refrained from adopting the constructive position of the African group towards special procedures.

In addition to opposing special procedures, the Egyptian government staunchly defended the role, and continued existence, of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, a body answerable to the Commission on Human Rights, comprising twenty-six independent experts appointed on the basis of geographical distribution. Egypt forcefully rejected the preliminary suggestions to replace the Sub-Commission with a panel of experts.⁶⁸  The Egyptian position can be traced to the fact that the members of the Sub-Commission are nominated for membership by their own governments. Despite the fact that these experts are expected to work in their personal capacity after election and not as representatives of their governments, a great many of them are far less independent than the experts working under the special mechanisms.

One indication of a potential lack of independence was evident from the way in which the Egyptian delegate voted at the last annual session of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, held in Geneva in late August 2005. The Egyptian delegate was one of only two members – out of twenty-six – who abstained from voting for a Committee decision to reaffirm the legal principle that the transfer of an individual to a country where s/he is at risk of torture is considered a breach of international customary law.⁶⁹ 

d) Attempts to Limit NGO Participation

It has been a matter of unanimous agreement amongst almost all regional groups, in their position vis-à-vis UN human rights reform, that the new Human Rights Council should preserve the relationship of close cooperation with NGOs that currently characterizes the Commission on Human Rights. The only group to break with this unanimity is the OIC, led by Egypt, Pakistan and a few other countries that are less influential when it comes to the Commission’s work.

The OIC’s paper on UN human rights reform called for a number of changes aimed at limiting NGO participation. The OIC, for example, wanted to reduce the number of oral statements presented by NGOs in the annual session of the Commission on Human Rights or in the new Council after its establishment, and to also reduce the number of items on the agenda where NGOs are allowed to give oral presentations. Furthermore, the OIC asked for a tightening of the restrictions on NGO attendance of Council hearings. The paper even called for punitive measures to be taken against NGOs that distribute papers or deliver statements “that use a language that does not respect UN restrictions.” ⁷⁰

Egypt and the OIC have therefore attempted to strictly limit the role of independent human rights organizations during Commission sessions. However, at the same time, they have emphasized that the participation of national human rights organizations, such as the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights, should be respected and reinforced. This stance is a clear indication that Egypt and the OIC prefer the participation of less independent entities in Commission sessions.⁷¹

e) Attempts to Derail the Negotiations for Establishing the Human Rights Council

After it became evident to Egypt and its allies within the Commission that they would not succeed in gathering enough opposition to the idea of replacing the Commission on Human Rights with a new Human Rights Council, these countries began to change their strategy. Egypt agreed to the concept of establishing a new entity – a change in position that could be seen, for example, from the resolution issued at the African Union summit at Sirte in Libya in July 2005, in which the Egyptian President participated and where Egypt agreed to the establishment of the new Council as a replacement for the Commission. ⁷² However, while Egypt and its allies claimed to support the idea of a new Council, they attempted at the same time to postpone the discussion of all the details connected to its powers, functions, mechanisms of operation, and procedural rules until after the World Summit planned for September 2005 in New York.

On 3 August 2005, Amnesty International issued a statement warning that a small number of countries had suggested to the President of the UN General Assembly that he delete all references to the Council’s scope of work, and establish a working group with open membership – answerable to the General Assembly – to conduct negotiations as to the scope of the work of, and all procedural matters pertaining to, the new Council. In its statement, Amnesty International warned against granting this request, stating:

This could mean indefinite delay and no guarantee that a new, stronger human rights body will be created that addresses the selectivity and excessive politicization of the Commission on Human Rights. A call to create an undefined Human Rights Council without specifying essential elements may even lead to a weakening of the existing UN human rights machinery.⁷³ 

In addition to Egypt, the countries that signed this statement included Cuba, China, Malaysia, Russia, Belarus and Vietnam.⁷⁴  Given the record of human rights abuses in these countries, it is easy to guess motives in postponing the discussion of the details of the new Council until after the Heads of State Summit – an event that will attract intensive press coverage.

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47- EIPR interview with Counselor Ihab Gamal-el-din, Cairo, 10 July 2005, available on file at the EIPR  

48- Statement of Ambassador Maged Abdel-Fattah, General Assembly Meeting No. 85, Session 59 (6 Apr. 2005), available at: http://www.un.org/webcast/ga2005.html 

49-Statement of Ambassador Maged Abdel-Fattah, Unofficial Consultations on the Third Section: Freedom to Live in Dignity of the Secretary-General’s Report (19 Apr. 2005) available on file at the EIPR 

50- Statement by Ambassador Naela Gabr, Egypt’s Permanent Representative, Unofficial Consultative Sessions regarding the Commission on Human Rights Reform made on behalf of the African Union (12 Apr. 2005) available on file at the EIPR 

51- Paper by the OIC Working Group on Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs Regarding the Reform of the UN Human Rights System (20 May 2005), available on file at the EIPR  

52- EIPR interview with Counselor Ihab Gamal-el-din, Cairo, 10 July 2005, available on file at the EIPR   

53- See, for example, statement made by Ambassador Maged Abdel-Fattah, op cit. available on file at the EIPR 

54- Gamal Nkrumah, “Africa on the Move,” Al-Ahram Weekly (21-27 Apr. 2005).

55- Summary of unofficial consultation session presented by the Chair of the 61st session of the Commission on Human Rights, in accordance with ECOSOC decision 217/2005

56- “In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All: Addendum: Human Rights Council – Explanatory Note by the Secretary-General,” UN Doc. A/59/2005/Add.1 (23 May 2005), para. 7, p. 3

57- Ibid  

58- Ibid 

59- Ibid 

60- Ibid 

61-Statement by Ambassador Naela Gabr, Egypt’s Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva, “Article 9: Violations of Human Rights and Basic Freedoms Anywhere in the World” (23 Mar. 2005), available on file at the EIPR 

62- EIPR interview with Counselor Ihab Gamal-el-din, Cairo, 10 July 2005, available on file at the EIPR 

63- The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “The OHCHR Plan of Action: Protection and Empowerment” (May 2005)

64- See Reports from the 61st session of the Commission on Human Rights.

65- Paper by the OIC Working Group on Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs Regarding the Reform of the UN Human Rights System (20 May 2005), pp. 3-5, available at on file at the EIPR 

66- “Final report of the 60th session of the Commission on Human Rights” (Mar.-Apr. 2004), pp. 459-461 

67- Summary of unofficial consultation session presented by the Chair of the 61st session of the Commission on Human Rights, in accordance with ECOSOC decision 217/2005, available

68- See the Oral Statement made by Egypt’s delegation at the 61st session of the Commission on Human Rights regarding the work of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (15 Apr. 2005).

69- United Nations, “Sub-Commission Adopts Texts on Human Rights Violations, Administration of Justice, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Prevention of Discrimination,” Press Release (10 Aug. 2005)

70-Paper by the OIC Working Group on Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs Regarding the Reform of the UN Human Rights System (20 May 2005), p. 8, available on file at the EIPR 

71- Ibid 

72- Assembly of the African Union, “Sirte Declaration on the Reform of the United Nations,” 5th Ordinary Session of the Assembly, AU Doc. Assembly/AU/Decl.2(V) (5 July 2005)

73- Amnesty International, “UN: Proposed Human Rights Council Must Not be Stripped of its Essentials,” IOR 40/024/2005 (4 Aug. 2005)

74-Ibid