The Conseil of the human rights of UNO is since 2006 the principal intergovernmental body of the the United Nations on all the relative questions with the Human rights.

The Council Secretariat is ensured by the Office of the High Commission of the United Nations the human rights and it president of the Council is the Rumanian Doru Romulus Costea. Its seat is with Geneva, in Suisse.

History

Its creation, decided by the General meeting of the United Nations in her resolution A/RES/60/251 of the March 15th 2006, fits in the current of reform of the United Nations impelled by the General secretary during the years 1997 - 2005.

The Council took again the responsibilities held since 1947 by the Commission for the human rights of the United Nations with significant modifications in its mode of election and its operation. The Council is a subsidiary body of the General meeting and thus has an institutional statute higher than that of the Commission which was a functional body of the Economic and Social Council.

The first election took place the May 9th 2006 and the term of the initial office of the members was determined by drawing lot.

The United States is opposed to the creation of the Council in this form. They had in the past highly criticized the old Commission, which they judged to have completely lost of its credibility following the presence of several countries violating the Human rights. The guarantees brought by the creation of this new Council not satisfying them, they were not presented in the form of candidates to the first election.

The first ordinary session of the Council opened the June 19th 2006.

An ordinary second session took place herself from September 19th to October 6th. The Member States of the Council decided to be given one year to redefine their operating rules, by means of specific work groups. During the second session they examined the whole of the reports/ratios which initially were to be examined in March - April 2006.

Two other ordinary sessions were held, of the November 29th to the December 8th 2006, and of the March 12th to the April 6th 2007. In parallel, the representatives of the States had several sessions of intergovernmental work to define the new rules of operation of the Council which were adopted at the time of the 5th session, behavior of the June 11th to the June 18th 2007.

One of the principal changes consisted of the installation of a mechanism of universal periodic examination of all the countries taking into consideration human right.

Universal periodic examination (EPU)

This new mechanism in turn will relate to all the countries as from February 2008. During specific sessions of the Council, each country will be the subject of a three hours debate, which will make it possible to formulate a draft recommendation addressed at the examined State or on a draft Resolution.

The examination of the situation of each country will be done on the basis of three documents:

• a ratio of twenty pages presented by the country concerned, which is " encouragé" to prepare this report/ratio with " to hold consultations of great scale at the national level with all the recipients to gather these renseignements" ;
• a ratio of ten pages of the High commissionership to the Human rights summarizing the information gathered by UNO on this country;
• a ratio of ten pages of the High commissionership, on the positions of the ONG.

For each country, a group of three diplomats drawn to the fate from various countries (troika), will be responsible to conclude the whole of the process.

The Governmental organizations will be able to attend this examination and will be able to speak in plenary session before the final recommendations are not adopted.

The 16 countries of the first session are:

Bahrain, Ecuador, Tunisia, Morocco, Indonesia, Finland, the United Kingdom, India, Brazil, Philippines, Algeria, Poland, Netherlands, South Africa, Czech Republic and Argentina.

The opinions on these changes are divided. Several ONG stresses that the mechanism will make it possible to have a dialog reinforced on the realization of the human rights in each country, in spite of the limits posed with the participation of ONG.

Member States

The members of the Council are 47 States elected by the General meeting in the majority absolute for one three years period and nonre-eligible after two consecutive mandates. After six years, a State must have patience at least during a year before remaking application form. The council is renewable per third every year.

Here the list of the Member States by continent with the expiration date of the mandate: ; Africa

South Africa (2010), Angola (2010), Cameroun (2009), Djibouti (2009),

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