Moldova’s human rights records reviewed by UN

The UPR process was also livestreamed in Chisinau within a public event organised by the UN Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in cooperation with the People’s Advocate Office and the Council on the Prevention and Elimination of Discrimination and Ensuring Equality.

“The Universal Periodic Review undergone today by Moldova represents for all of us a new stage in making an overview of the human rights status in the country. At the same time, the deliberations held today show the major areas for action in future. This has huge potential for positive changes in the life of a number of groups of people in Moldova, such as women, persons with disabilities, Roma and other ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities, etc.”, stated Veaceslav Balan, National Human Rights Coordinator at OHCHR in Moldova.

This event was organised within the project “Supporting National Human Rights Institutions as per International Treaty Bodies and UPR Recommendations” funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway, co-funded and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Moldova and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in cooperation with the Ombudsperson’s Office and the Council on the Prevention and Elimination of Discrimination and Ensuring Equality.

Following the presentation by the Government of Moldova of the results achieved so far upon the UPR recommendations in 2011, most of the UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group recommendations focused on:

• Strengthening the efforts of ratifying the international and regional human rights conventions, particularly accepting the individual complaints procedures.
• Developing and implementing a comprehensive national human rights strategy.
• Supporting the People’s Advocate Office to become an “A-Status” national human rights institution and securing the independence of the latter.
• Providing support for effective implementation of the decisions of the Council on the Prevention and Elimination of Discrimination and Ensuring Equality.
• Fighting all forms of discrimination, particularly racial discrimination, discrimination against girls and women, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, and hate crimes.
• Fighting torture and ill-treatment within penitentiary and psychoneurological institutions.
• Reducing corruption in the judiciary.
• Ensuring social inclusion of persons with disabilities.
• Ensuring freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of religion, and media pluralism.
• Effectively implementing the Strategy on Ensuring Gender Equality and other existing national strategies.
• Effectively combating domestic violence and protecting the victims thereof.
• Combating violence against children.
• Ensuring social and educational inclusion of Roma children.
• Reducing the youth unemployment rate.
• Promoting human rights in the Transnistrian region.
• Adopting a strategy for integration of national minorities.
• Effectively cooperating with civil society organizations on human rights issues.
• Fully implementing the recommendations of the first UPR cycle.

The report of the UPR Working Group on Moldova based on the current session will be discussed on November 8, 2016, and the Report with the Final Recommendations will be adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in March 2017. Afterwards, the state, in cooperation with the foreign donors, the civil society, and other institutions, will be responsible for implementing the recommendations with a view to observing human rights and fundamental freedoms at national level.

UPR is a unique mechanism reviewing progress in the area of human rights in all 193 UN member states. It was established in 2006 by the UN Human Rights Council and is conducted every 4,5 years.

Moldova’s first review within the UPR was conducted in 2011, when it received 123 recommendations for improving the human rights situation at national level.  The latter related to improving the situation with women’s rights (20), children’s rights (20), trafficking in persons (17), the rights of ethnic minorities (14), the rights of persons with disabilities (11), gender equality and sexual orientation (10), torture and ill-treatment and (10) racial discrimination (10).

• To watch the recorded session, please visit:  http://webtv.un.org
• The list of speakers and the speeches made during Moldova’s UPR will be available on UPR’s extranet at: https://extranet.ohchr.org/sites/upr/Sessions/26session/RepublicMoldova/Pages/default.aspx 
  
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• For further details about the UPR mechanism, please see: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/UPR/Pages/UPRMain.aspx