As delivered by Paraguay on behalf of the Group of Friends of national implementation, reporting and follow-up
Mr. President,
I am speaking on behalf of the Group of Friends on national implementation, reporting and follow-up (Angola, Australia, Bahamas, Belgium, Botswana, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, Fiji, Georgia, Haiti, Italy, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Paraguay, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Seychelles, Slovenia, Sweden, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Tunisia and Uruguay).
Mr. President,
Strengthening the capacity of States in the area of Human Rights is fundamental to achieving an improvement in the human rights situation in the field. In this regard, we welcome Report A / HRC / 38/27 on Operations of the Voluntary Fund for Financial and Technical Assistance in the Application of the Universal Periodic Review. We believe that this fund is a tool that has a positive contribution to make in relation to the effective implementation of international human rights standards in the field.
We celebrate that, in his last annual report, the Secretary General indicated that he would work for greater support for the creation of national mechanisms for the presentation of reports on human rights and follow-up in order to link the recommendations of the Universal Periodic Review with the application of the Sustainable Development Goals. We believe that the recent development, in many States, of national mechanisms for implementation, reporting and follow-up (NMIRFs) holds enormous potential to power a new and effective human rights ‘implementation momentum”.
At the same time, the considerations of the Board of Trustees regarding the need to strengthen technical assistance and cooperation with States that seek to establish or strengthen the capacity of national reporting mechanisms and follow-up on human rights recommendations goes hand in hand with what the Secretary General expressed.
We welcome the increase in both the amount of contributions and the number of donors, which are tangible signs of a greater financial commitment. We encourage all States that are willing to contribute to the Fund and to support, in this way, the action undertaken at the national and local level by the NMIRFs regarding domestic implementation.
We also encourage States that wish to strengthen their capacity, particularly through the creation or strengthening of NMIRFs, to request technical cooperation through this Fund.