Human Rights Council 39: UK national statement regarding the Universal Periodic Review
This UK statement was delivered at the 39th session of the Human Rights Council during the Universal Period Review.
The Human Rights Council takes place at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
The United Kingdom continues to attach great importance to the process of Universal Periodic Review. During this third cycle of the UPR, the UK has participated fully by taking part in the review of every state. We have striven to ensure that all the recommendations we make to other States are precise, practical, constructive, forward looking and implementable.
Exactly one year ago, on 21 September 2017, the United Kingdom’s 3rd UPR report was adopted by the Council. At that time we made clear that the UK does not see the UPR as just a three-and-a-half-hour dialogue that occurs for States every four and half years. And we made two voluntary commitments. Firstly, we undertook to provide a further mid-term report in 2019 (the UK’s third such report). And our second commitment was to inform the Council, within a year, about the progress we had achieved in implementing five of the recommendations that the UK supported. I am pleased to inform the Council that we went beyond this commitment, by submitting information to the UPR secretariat on measures we had taken in relation to five thematic areas covering a range of recommendations which were raised during the UK’s UPR. These issues were selected after consultation with civil society organisations and covered the following topics:
1) domestic human rights framework, including the status of UN human rights treaties; 2) combating violence against women and girls; 3) tackling racial discrimination; 4) access to justice; and 5) combating human trafficking and slavery.
The UK found the process of fulfilling this commitment an extremely helpful way of maintaining a domestic focus on the UPR. We encourage all states to consider ways to use the time between reporting cycles to maintain a continued focus on UPR at the national level in order to advance implementation of supported recommendations.