36th Human Rights Council

36th Human Rights Council

News
September 12, 2017

36TH HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL


Yesterday, the 36th Regular Session of the Human Rights Council started. From the 11th until the 29th of September 47 countries meet in Geneva, Switzerland to discuss human rights. Here is everything you need to know about it.

What is the HRC?
Three times a year, in March, June and September, UN Member States, human rights experts, and civil society representatives meet for three to four weeks at the Human Rights Council (HRC). The HRC monitors the fulfillment of human rights around the world, and can make recommendations on human rights themes in general (such as the reproductive rights of young people), or the human rights situation in specific countries or regions (like a humanitarian crisis). Want to know more about the HRC and how they work? Read all about the it in our HRC resource.


So what about HRC36?
The 36th session of the HRC’s agenda is not as crowded on sexual and reproductive rights and health as the last session in June. However, there are still some very relevant topics on the agenda on other human rights issues related to gender and youth. For instance, the annual discussion on the integration of a gender perspective throughout the work of the HRC will take place on the 15th of september. The theme of the discussion is the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. The session is so interesting because it will give an opportunity for collective action in order to achieve gender equality, ultimately leading to the fulfillment of human rights for all women and girls.


Adopting human rights recommendations
Very importantly, during this session of the HRC the outcomes from the 27th session of the United Periodic Review (UPR) will also be discussed, including those of the Netherlands, Indonesia and India. The United Periodic Review is a review of the human rights records of all UN Member States, where states get a chance to declare what they can and will do to improve the human rights in their country. These countries all received recommendations related to SRHR and SOGI, and some of them have postponed to adopt until this session.  If they do choose to adopt them (for instance, Indonesia received recommendations on legal protection of LGBT persons) these decisions will be of great value for our national level advocacy work!
You can follow all the discussions at the HRC live on UN web tv. Still a bit confused? We got you! Check out all our resources to learn everything there is on SRHR advocacy.