A/HRC/DEC/19/119
insufficient translating and editing capacity of United Nations Office at Geneva for the
processing of Council-related documentation. Efforts were therefore made by the President
and other members of the Bureau to engage with the Fifth Committee of the General
Assembly and to request the redeployment of vacant posts in the Department for General
Assembly and Conference Management in Headquarters to the Division of Conference
Management in Geneva, in order to strengthen the translating and editing capacity of the
Office at Geneva with regard to Council-related documentation. While the transfer of posts
was not considered, the Fifth Committee decided to request the Secretary-General to
designate capacity to support the universal periodic review and to report thereon in the
context of the performance report.a In addition, the General Assembly also approved the
resources requested by the Council in its decision 17/119 (with timetable attached) to
support the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review as a result of the extension of
the review by 30 minutes for each State under review during the second universal periodic
review cycle. The United Nations Office at Geneva, however, underlined the fact that the
General Assembly, in its resolution 66/246, had only approved $54,000 per biennium for
the additional 30 minutes of meetings, and not for the overall costs relating to the servicing
of the three annual regular sessions of the Working Group. The Office will be required to
report on its needs to the Secretary-General in 2012, as requested by the Assembly in
resolution 66/246.
7.
With regard to the processing of Human Rights Council-related documentation, the
task force strongly emphasized the need for the secretariat to do its utmost to ensure the
timely submission (Office of the High Commissioner), processing and publication (United
Nations Office at Geneva) of all Council-related documentation, in accordance with
existing relevant General Assembly rules. In this regard, several concrete measures were
discussed, such as online posting of advance edited Council pre-session documents,
whenever available; avoiding the scheduling of back-to-back regular sessions of the
Council and those of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review; and the
provision of information on the status of Council pre-session documents, in particular in the
event of delay. In exceptional circumstances, the task force also referred to the possibility
of workload sharing between various duty stations of the United Nations for the processing
of documents.
8.
With regard to the webcasts of the sessions of the Human Rights Council and the
Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review, the task force underlined its added value
to the work of the Council and in making contact with non-resident stakeholders. The task
force expressed its concern, however, at the current arrangement between the Department
of Public Information and the Office of the High Commissioner for the provision of
webcast facilities, which are funded exclusively by the extrabudgetary resources of the
Office. The task force was of the view that measures should be taken to ensure the
sustainable webcasting of Council meetings. In this regard, it was suggested that, should it
not be possible to obtain regular budget resources specifically to support these activities,
the Department of Public Information should redeploy resources from Headquarters to
Geneva. In addition, financial resources could also be requested from the regular budget to
broaden the scope of the webcast, for instance to include captioning for persons with
disabilities or to cover other meetings, including treaty bodies.
B.
Recommendations
9.
The Department for General Assembly and Conference Management, the Advisory
Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, the Fifth Committee and the
United Nations Controller are encouraged to take the measures necessary to strengthen the
a
4
General Assembly resolution 66/246, para. 62.
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