October 2007/N°7 Fine tuning the institution building The 6th Session of the UN Human Rights Council, 10-28 September Felix Kirchmeier, FES Geneva Starting into its second year of existence, the UN Human Rights Council(HRC) seems to have found into a certain routine. While member and observer states of the HRC keep repeating that the Council is still in its con­stituting phase and that no precedents should be set, substantive work is replacing the institu­tion building tasks 1 of the first year little by little. Aside of reviewing some Special Procedures mandates, the program of work touched upon a number of substantial issues, including the open item 4 of“human rights situations that require the HRC’s attention.” The“New Approach” of the Council In the run-up to the session many member states talked about a so-called new approach of the Council. In order to break with the much criticized practice to“name and shame” human rights violators, it seemed they were aiming for a practice to merely“raise and praise” states with good or at least improving human rights records, depriving the HRC of its most effective “teeth” of public political pressure. Fortunately this did not fully materialize and the HRC was still able to give room to discussions on issues of concern, rather than getting lost in a mere enumeration of best practices. Institutional Issues and Review of Mandates A lot of the time of this session was devoted to institution building tasks, the reports of Special Procedures(SP) and the review of mandates. The resolution establishing the Council (A/RES/60/251) had transferred all mandates from the former Commission, calling for the HRC to“review and, where necessary, improve 1 For in-depth information on the institution building proc­ess see: FES /ISHR: A New Chapter for Human Rights, and FES Occasional Paper 33: Building the New Human Rights Council on: www.fes-geneva.org and rationalize” them“within one year after the holding of its first session.” 2 How exactly this revision was to be done was left to the HRC, which has been reviewing them rather on a case by case basis and not along a standard­ized procedure. Although many member states had made clear that the review of mandates could be done without the presence of the mandate holder and should not necessarily be attached to their report to the HRC, the secre­tariat ensured the presence of the holders of the mandates reviewed in this session. While some where presenting their reports, others were pre­sent to explain or defend their mandate but still spoke rather on the issue than on the technicali­ties of their mandate. Most of the mandates dealt with in the session- country specific and thematic- were renewed and even one new SP was created. Among the mandates addressed, only a decision on the mandate of the Inde­pendent Expert on the situation in the Democ­ratic Republic of the Congo was deferred to the December part of the 6 th session as was the consideration of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Sudan by way of a resolution tabled by Egypt. 3 Other resolutions welcomed the work of the mandate holder, yet using am­biguous language about the continuation of their work. Follow-up resolutions determining the future of those mandates will be necessary. The future of the former Working Groups of the Sub-Commission was decided by consensus. In general, the mechanisms are kept, but directly attached to the HRC in a slightly changed nature. 2 A/RES/60/251, OP 6. 3 Besides the delay of the resolution on the Sudan mandate, two other country specific mandates had been“discontin­ued”: Belarus and Cuba managed to have“their” mandates terminated already before the start of the session.