A/HRC/29/5
areas — climate change, biodiversity, waste management and pollution control, resource
management and environmental governance — and sought to keep the Government and
donors abreast of the environment priorities that needed to be addressed at the national
level. The policy was also aimed at protecting and managing the environment and promoted
the resilience of the peoples of Kiribati against the impacts of climate change.
15.
The Kiribati Joint Implementation Plan for Climate Change and Disaster Risk
Management had been designed to complement the National Disaster Risk Management
Plan and the National Framework for Climate Change and Climate Change Adaptation. The
Kiribati Joint Implementation Plan respected and promoted human rights by ensuring that
all I-Kiribati had increased access to food security, safe water security and land security,
taking into account the current and future threats of climate change and disasters such as
sea-level rise and drought.
16.
Efforts had been made to establish systems for mainstreaming human rights into the
work of all ministries and departments that administered and implemented national laws,
including the Constitution. For example, the Kiribati National Human Rights Taskforce had
been set up in July 2014, and a human rights unit had been included within the Ministry for
Women, Youth and Social Affairs, effective from 2015.
17.
The delegation stated that the commitment of Kiribati to addressing and increasing
the promotion and protection of human rights was entrenched in the country’s own
traditional system. Kiribati was blessed with strong, age-old traditional and cultural
institutions that safeguarded the basic human rights of its people and communities. The
Ministry of Women, Youth and Social Affairs, through its Women’s Development Division
and Social Welfare Division, had conducted awareness-raising and consultations on human
rights conventions in collaboration with regional and international organizations. During
the period 2013–2014, human rights training on the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination against Women and eliminating sexual and gender-based violence
had been conducted on 20 of the 22 inhabited islands of Kiribati. A direct outcome of the
initiative had been the creation of a pool of human rights defenders and male advocates
throughout Kiribati.
18.
Child protection legislation had been reformed through a common effort by the
Government and all stakeholders. A technical working group, established in 2010,
continued to work with representatives from NGOs and faith-based organizations.
Awareness-raising programmes on the Children, Young People and Family Welfare Act
and policy had been conducted in nine islands, including the capital, Tarawa, where over 50
per cent of the population — more than 50,000 people — resided. The other islands in the
country would be visited in 2015. Under section 18, subsections 1 and 2, of the Children,
Young People and Family Welfare Act 2013, any person was mandated to report concerns
to the police and welfare officers about the well-being of a child or young person, including
children undergoing and suffering from corporal punishment both in the community and in
schools. During the consultations on that legislation and the related policy, community
members had been trained to become child protection advocates.
19.
The Youth Justice Bill was being drafted and the final version would be submitted to
the Cabinet by the end of March 2015.
20.
The Kiribati National Human Rights Taskforce had been working on pending
reports for the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
and the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC). It aimed at submitting the
consolidated initial and second and third periodic reports to CEDAW in April 2015. The
consolidated second to fourth periodic reports for CRC would be submitted in June 2015.
The task force would also compile and submit the initial report for the Committee on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities by the due date in 2015. The recent creation of the
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