Palau to face human rights review

Transcript

Palau will undergo a United Nations review of its human rights tomorrow.

The island faces its second Universal Periodic Review in Geneva.

Palau's last one took place in 2011 where they received 106 recommendations.

The Suva-based UN Human Rights Officer Satya Jennings told Koro Vaka'uta a lot of the concerns surrounded the lack of international conventions Palau has signed up to.

SATYA JENNINGS: Several of the recommendations made during the first round of the Universal Periodic Review of Palau referred to the ratification of core human rights treaties. As to date, Palau has only ratified two of them: the convention on the rights of the child and the convention of the rights of persons with disabilities. Since the last review of Palau, only ratified one convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. We expect that this time around, recommendations on this subject will remain as the treaty has only been signed but not ratified. So there is the need of further action in this area.

KORO VAKAUTA: There have been some advance questions being submitted - what areas do they cover?

SJ: There have been a few questions, one refers for example to the protection of the rights of the child and on which measures Palau has taken to implement the convention on the rights of the child. Other advance questions that Palau will need to answer relate to corporal punishment of children, asked by Mexico. The UK raised crimes committed against foreign workers and asked whether those are being fully investigated by Palau and how Palau is strengthening the protections of migrant workers and their families. Another advance question posed by Belgium refers to what I mentioned before, to the ratification of UN human rights treaties, and if Palau can give an indication to the timing of the ratification of the outstanding treaties. Also, the report to the committee on the rights of the child is overdue since 2002 and one of the advance questions refers to that, asking when will Palau submit its overdue report to the committee on the rights of the child. Some of the main issues that we have followed in Palau with regards to this human rights situation are indeed the discrimination and abuse of foreign workers, domestic violence or gender-based violence and corporal punishment of children. So we expect some of these issues to be raised again.