Sixteen United Nations Member States face the Universal Periodic Review of their human rights records in October of this year, among them Syria, Zimbabwe, East Timor, Uganda and Venezuela. Other countries to go before the UPR in October are: Tajikistan, Tanzania, Antigua and Barbuda, Swaziland, Trinidad and Tobago, Thailand, Togo, Iceland, Lithuania, and Moldova. Some States’ national reports are already available online, while others are not.
With regard to Syria, participating civil society representatives (whose submissions were due in March) called for ratification of international treaties, including the Convention against Torture, and the integration of international human rights norms into national legislation. Organizations including Amnesty International and the Kurdish Human Rights Project highlighted de facto and de jure discrimination against women and ethnic and sexual minorities; they also criticized continued use of the death penalty, arbitrary and secret detention, poor prison conditions, torture, and the lack of an independent judiciary, among other problems.
For Venezuelan stakeholders, the country’s key human rights issues are the lack of domestic implementation of human rights obligations – including the inexistence of a framework for dialogue between civil society and the State – in addition to lack of cooperation with international human rights mechanisms, discrimination on the basis of sexual identity and HIV status, lack of citizen security (rampant violent crime), arbitrary detentions, high level of extrajudicial executions, overcrowding in prisons, threats against human rights defenders and victims’ family members, lack of an independent judiciary, impunity, crackdowns on political opponents, interference in the work of labor unions (including through assassinations), among other issues.
In Ireland, the Irish Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International, along with roughly 58 other organizations, made submissions to the UPR. [Irish Times] Among issues of concern for civil society are prison conditions, foster home inspections, asylum procedures, and the rights of same-sex couples.