UN COMMITTEE ON ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION REPEATS ANNUAL CALL TO UN DECOLONIZATION COMMITTEE FOR INFORMATION ON RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN COLONIAL TERRITORIES

Report of the Committee  on the Elimination 

of  Racial Discrimination

Eighty-seventh session
(3-28 August 2015)
Eighty-eighth session
(23 November-11 December 2015)
Eighty-ninth session
(25 April-13 May 2016)

General Assembly
Official Records
Seventy-first SessionSupplement No. 18

EXCERPT

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VIII. Consideration of copies of petitions, copies of reports and other information relating to Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories to which General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) applies, in conformity with article 15 of the Convention

44. Under article 15 of the Convention, the Committee is empowered to consider copies of petitions, reports and other information relating to Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories and to all other territories to which General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) applies, as transmitted to it by the competent bodies of the United Nations, and to submit to the General Assembly its expressions of opinion and recommendations in this regard. 

45. Accordingly, and at the request of the Committee, Mr. Bossuyt examined the report of the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples covering its work during 2014[1] and copies of the working papers on the 16 Territories prepared by the secretariat for the Special Committee and the Trusteeship Council (see CERD/C/89/3) and presented his report to the Committee at its eighty-ninth session, on 13 May 2016.

  The Committee noted, as it had done in the past, that it was difficult to fulfil its functions comprehensively under article 15 of the Convention owing to the fact that the copies of the reports received pursuant to paragraph 2 (b) contained only scant information directly relating to the principles and objectives of the Convention. (EMPHASIS ADDED)

46. The Committee further noted that there was significant ethnic diversity in a number of the Non-Self-Governing Territories, warranting a close watch on incidents or trends that reflected racial discrimination and violation of rights guaranteed in the Convention. 

The Committee therefore stressed that greater efforts should be made to raise awareness concerning the principles and objectives of the Convention in Non-Self-Governing Territories. 

The Committee also stressed the need for States parties administering Non-Self-Governing Territories to include details on the implementation of the Convention in those territories in their periodic reports to the Committee. 

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                    [1]   Official Records of the General Assembly, Sixty-ninth Session, Supplement No. 23 (A/69/23).