Action to be taken on the conclusions of the Parliamentary Conference on Human Rights

Recommendation 683 (1972)

Author(s):

Parliamentary Assembly

Origin

Assembly debate on 23 October 1972 (15th Sitting) (see Doc. 3161, report of the Legal Affairs Committee). Text adopted by the Assembly on 23 October 1972 (15th Sitting).

The Assembly,

1. Having regard to Resolution 467 (1971) on the organisation of a Parliamentary Conference on Human Rights ;

2. Recalling Resolution 505 (1972) on the results of the Parliamentary Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna from 18 - 20 October 1971 ;

3. Considering the proceedings and the conclusions of the Vienna Conference, with a view to drawing up a short- and medium-term programme in the field of human rights in Europe complementing the European Convention on Human Rights ;

4. Recalling that the Statute of the Council of Europe stipulates that Council bodies should take as their aims not only the maintenance but also the further realisation of human rights and fundamental freedoms ;

5. Noting the work already done for the maintenance of human rights, thanks to the establishment and day-to-day functioning of the European Convention on Human Rights and its Protocols ;

6. Conscious that the growth of Europe can be soundly based only if it is founded on respect for the human being and if it endeavours to provide an increasingly wide guarantee of his fundamental rights,

7. Recommends that the Committee of Ministers :

a set up an ad hoc committee, composed of highly qualified personalities, each sitting in his personal capacity, chosen principally from the European Commission and Court of Human Rights, the Committee of Experts on Human Rights and the Assembly's Legal Affairs Committee, and including representatives of the Secretariat of the Council of Europe, and one or two outside specialists in matters pertaining to the European Convention ;

b instruct the ad hoc committee to consider the proposals appended to the present recommendation on a short- and medium-term programme for the Council of Europe in the general field of human rights, as well as any other suggestions made by members of the said ad hoc committee ;

c submit to it the programme thus prepared for an opinion.

Proposals for a short- and medium-term programme for the Council of Europe in the general field of human rights

A. In respect of human rights which should be protected :

1. instruct the Committee of Experts on Human Rights to study the possibility of completing the convention by the addition of one or more protocols, or to draw up any other suitable legal instrument for protecting the right to asylum as well as the right of conscientious objection ;

2. organise an interdisciplinary symposium on the question of the beginning and the end of the right to life ;

3. consider, in the light of the conclusions reached at the United Nations Conference in Stockholm and the Council of Europe Conference in Vienna on the environment, whether the right to an adequate environment should be raised to the level of a human right, and devise an appropriate legal instrument to protect this new right ;

4. study the question of extending the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms by the addition of a new protocol which would :

a secure as an enforceable right the right of an individual not to be unfairly discriminated against on religious, political, racial or other grounds in respect of access to employment and allocation of housing ;

b secure the equal treatment of persons in the enforcement of the law.

B. In respect of persons to be protected :

1. have the question studied whether action should be taken within the Council of Europe in order to give fuller protection to the rights of women and the rights of children ;

2. instruct the Committee of Experts on Human Rights to study the advisability of drawing up a legal instrument to cover the specific needs of all prisoners, and particularly political prisoners ;

3. instruct a committee of experts to consider, in close liaison with the professional organisations of journalists and pressmen, all matters relating to freedom of information and of the press in member States of the Council of Europe.

C. In respect of the machinery for protecting human rights :

1. recommend that member States establish within their administrations a bureau, service or department of human rights, responsible for coordinating their activities concerning the protection and promotion of human rights ;

2. draw up a European agreement rendering the decisions pronounced by the European Court of Human Rights enforceable in internal law ;

3. recommend to the governments of member States where the convention is not directly applicable in the national courts that they take the necessary steps to integrate the convention into their domestic law, and instruct the Committee of Experts on Human Rights to discuss the problems raised by direct application of the convention in the national law of Contracting States ;

4. study the possibility of adding to the existing machinery of the European Convention on Human Rights a procedure enabling national courts to address requests for preliminary rulings to the Court of Human Rights on a problem of interpretation of the convention ;

5. study the question of whether the physically or mentally handicapped have special problems in submitting petitions to the European Commission of Human Rights ;

6. study the possibility of conflicts of jurisdiction between the new procedure for the examination of individual petitions to the United Nations (Resolution 503 (XLVIII) of the Economic and Social Council) and the machinery of the European convention ;

7. make it possible for the Committee of Experts on Human Rights to exercise its present role more effectively and to contribute at intergovernmental level to the further realisation of human rights ;

8. study the possibility of preparing a charter to protect human rights against private persons and agencies.

D. In respect of abuses of human rights :

1. study the question of the duties of man, and the possibility of drawing up a European text with the aim of preventing abuses.