A/HRC/6/21 page 5 6. The Government of Cuba noted that the current legal status of CESCR is inferior to that of the Human Rights Committee. Even if in practice the CESCR carried out similar functions as its counterparts, it would be very beneficial to initiate a process to make the legal status of the Committee equal to that of the other human rights treaty bodies, especially the Human Rights Committee. The fundamental basis for this initiative lay in the indivisible and universal character of all human rights. 7. The Government of Denmark noted that it had no objections to the idea of rectifying the legal status of the CESCR with the aim of placing it on a par with all other treaty monitoring bodies, on the understanding that no changes were foreseen in the mandate and/or powers of the Committee. 8. The Government of the Dominican Republic, as a participant in the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, at which the universality, indivisibility and interdependence of human rights was reaffirmed, considered it appropriate to modify the legal status of the CESCR. 9. The Government of Finland noted that it considered very important the process initiated by the Human Rights Council to rectify, in accordance with international law, the legal status of the Committee, and that it looked forward to continued discussions in the Council on the matter. 10. The Government of Guyana noted that the rectification of the legal status of the CESCR would signal the international community’s commitment to the equal application, promotion, respect and protection of human rights and to their universality, indivisibility, interdependence and interrelatedness. 11. The Government of Ireland considered that the issue of giving treaty-based status to the CESCR was particularly acute in the light of the negotiations within the Open-ended Working Group on an optional protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It noted that one possible disadvantage of conferring treaty status on the CESCR was that it may cut across proposals to reform the treaty monitoring bodies; one possibility might be to include a provision similar to article 27 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance explicitly providing for the possibility of treaty body reform. 12. The Government of Japan requested OHCHR to carefully consider rectifying the legal status of CESCR, including its necessity and possible ways to proceed with it. 13. The Government of Liechtenstein noted that given the cumbersome and lengthy procedure required to change the legal status of CESCR, it did not, at this stage, favour a change in the legal status of the Committee. The Government noted that in monitoring the implementation of the Covenant, the Committee had placed itself on par with the other human rights treaty bodies. While the work of the Open-ended Working Group on an optional protocol to the ICESCR aimed at levelling out any differences that might exist in the perception of the rights guaranteed by the Covenant and those contained in other human rights treaties, there was no such difference in perception with regard to the standing of the Committee in its monitoring role compared to that of the other treaty bodies. The most substantive difference between CESCR and the other expert bodies consisted in the manner in which their members were elected. The introduction and