Human Rights Council Ends Confidential Examination of Iran and Uzbekistan

On Monday, the UN Human Rights Council voted to discontinue examining the human rights situations in Iran and Uzbekistan, which it was considering under its confidential complaint procedure (known as the “1503 procedure”). See the Reuters story here.

The recommendation to end consideration was made by a five-country committee (one from each UN regional group) called the “Working Group on Situations.” Its current members are Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Hungary, Germany and Argentina–members of the last Commission on Human Rights whose membership in the Working Group on Situations was extended by the new Council for its first year, despite the fact that two of them (Zimbabwe and Hungary) are not even Human Rights Council members.