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recommendation in its resolution 1995/15 (para. 9). The Committee has not
been consulted in any way in relation to this initiative and, as far as can be
ascertained, the Centre for Human Rights has still not undertaken the
organization of even one such seminar.
349. In view of the extraordinarily limited resources devoted by the Centre
for Human Rights to the only body dealing expressly with economic, social and
cultural rights within the entire United Nations system, the Committee calls
upon the Centre to take immediate steps to rectify this situation and requests
the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights to report to the Committee at
its thirteenth session as to the arrangements that have been made.
Staffing for the Committee
350. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has for the past
several years sought to draw attention to the fact that there is not a single
specialist in these rights within the Centre for Human Rights. As a result,
the Committee has been unable to call upon any specialist expertise for any of
its many research and related needs. It considers this situation to be a
negation of the oft-proclaimed equality of the two sets of rights and calls
upon the Secretary-General to take urgent measures designed to ensure the
availability of, at the very least, a minimal amount of expert assistance to
the Committee.
Office facilities for members of the treaty bodies
351. For the past seven years the Committee, as well as the regular biennial
meetings of persons chairing the human rights treaty bodies, have persistently
called for both the establishment of a resource and documentation facility and
the provision of an office for use by members of the treaty bodies when their
committees are in session in Geneva. The Committee is delighted to note that
some progress has been promised in relation to the former proposal. It
regrets, however, that successive heads of the Centre for Human Rights have
made no attempt to provide any facilities whatsoever for the members of the
treaty bodies. The result is that there is no place to leave voluminous and
often confidential or private papers except in the conference rooms, which
remain entirely open to the public. There is no place to leave equipment such
as laptop computers, and no place to obtain access to a computer or a printer.
There is not even a place where expert members may obtain access to copies of
the Committee’s own past documentation.
352. The situation could be remedied by setting aside a single office, with
several lockable desks in it, a computer and a printer, and some basic
documentation for use by the 97 members of the various treaty bodies when they
are in Geneva. While the Committee recognizes the shortage of office space
available to the Centre, it does not accept the implied position of the Centre
that the treaty bodies can be given no access whatsoever to even the most
basic facilities. The Committee calls upon the Centre to reconsider this
matter urgently.