Iceland's Participation in International Human Rights Fora

lakob Th. Moller

1. Participation in United Nations human rights fora may be divided into three parts: A) Membership in human rights bodies; B) Living up to international treaty obligations by submitting performance reports to the monitoring bodies; C) Other participation, such as attending meetings in observer capacity; We will trace, in a nutshell, how Iceland has fared in this respect. For com­ parison, some facts and figures concerning the other Nordic countries will be included. A) Membership in human rights bodies 2. Through the years, the Nordic countries have played an active and con­ structive role in the various human rights bodies of the United Nations, both the existing treaty based bodies and those established by decisions of the main United Nations organs. Nordic members from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have served with distinction on these bodies, often on a rotation basis. Iceland, however, has been conspicuously absent from this rotation for one reason or another. Nordic membership on the main policy making body, the Commission on Human Rights (from 1947 to 1991), illustrates this fact as follows: Denmark: 11 years (first in 1948) Finland: 6 years (first in 1969) Iceland: never Norway: 9 years (first in 1955) Sweden: 12 years (first in 1951) Nordic members have also served with distinction on the Commission's main subsidiary body, the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination

Nordic Journal of International Law 61162: 189-192, 1994. 189 © 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. and Protection of Minorities. (For the better part of the last twelve years the Nordic member has been Asbjorn Eide (Norway, with lan Helgesen as alter­ nate). A similar story is also true in respect of the Commission on the Status of Women, where Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have rotated as members, but Iceland never has. 3. The picture does not change when it comes to the treaty bodies which monitor the implementation of international human rights treaties to which Iceland is a party, that is the Human Rights Committee, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The Nordic membership has been as follows: a) Human Rights Committee (1977-1991) Ole Espersen (Denmark): 1977-1978 Torkel Opsahl (Norway): 1977-1986 BertH Wennergren (Sweden): since 1987 b) Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (1970-1991) Isi Foighel (Denmark): 1988-1991 Kjell Oberg (Sweden): 1984-1988 c) Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (1982-1991) lohan Nordenfelt (Sweden): 1982-1984 Rakel Surlien (Norway): 1982-1986 Margareta Wadstein (Sweden): 1986-1988 Grethe Fenger-Moller (Denmark): since 1988 d) Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1988-1991) - no Nordic member, so far. 4. There are two other new treaty bodies for treaties which Iceland has not ratified or acceded to, namely, the Committee against Torture and the Commit­ tee on the Rights of the Child. A Danish expert, Dr. Bent Sorensen, has been a member of CAT from the beginning (1988) and a Swedish expert, Mr. Thomas Hammarberg, has recently been elected as member of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CROC), which will hold its first session in September 1991. 5. Iceland's consistent pattern of non-membership in UN human rights fora was broken from 1985-1987, when Iceland took a seat in the 54 member Eco­ nomic and Social Council, thus entering the Nordic rotation for the first time. Attendance at the meetings of the main Committees of the General Assembly, including the Third Committee, which deals among other things with human

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