CYIL vol. 13 (2022)

MAREK ZUKAL – JAN MAIS CYIL 13 ȍ2022Ȏ The work of the Sixth Committee, as well as work of all other UN fora, continued to be influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the Committee did not hold as many plenary meetings as it does under the usual circumstances. Plenary meetings of the Committee took place in three combined conference rooms to ensure social distancing among delegations. One third of the representatives of the Member States was seated in each conference room and the footage of the Chair and the speaker were streamed to all three of them. It is the established practice that after a plenary debate on an agenda item, informal consultations on the text of draft resolution take place. These informal consultations are usually facilitated by a bureau-appointed facilitator 7 , whose task is to reach a consensus among all Member States on the draft text. Under normal circumstances, these informal consultations would take place between the formal plenary sessions of the Committee (e. g. during a lunch break) and would be in-person. However, due to pandemic restrictions, all informal consultations during the 76 th session took place virtually. This affected the dynamics of negotiations significantly, as virtual meetings do not require delegations to engage on negotiations as actively as when in the room. Consensus-building process is much slower, meetings are longer and less fruitful. It was also the case that a resolution that can usually be negotiated during one or two informal consultations this time required four, five or more virtual meetings. As the agenda of the Sixth Committee is rather extensive, the authors decided to further focus only on some of the agenda items considered during the 76 th session (the rest of the agenda items is only described briefly). Namely, they describe the process of consideration and negotiations under agenda items Crimes against humanity, The scope and application of principle of universal jurisdiction and the United Nations Programme of Assistance in the Teaching, Study, Dissemination and Wider Appreciation of International Law. By describing negotiations that took place under these agenda items, they intend to show progressing politicization of the work of the Sixth Committee. Such politicization combined with consensus-based decision making, sometimes leads to the Committee’s complete paralysis. Consequently, it leads to paralysis of codification and progressive development of international law in some areas. Crimes against humanity The agenda item entitled “Crimes against humanity” has been on the agenda of the General Assembly since 2020. In 2019, the General Assembly adopted resolution 8 on crimes against humanity under agenda item “Report of the International Law Commission on the work of its seventy-first session”. In this resolution, the General Assembly took note of the draft articles on prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity presented by the ILC and decided to include in the provisional agenda of its 75 th session an item entitled “Crimes against humanity” and to continue to examine the recommendation of the ILC to elaborate a convention on the basis of these draft articles. The Czech Republic, together with a group of other States, expressed its regrets that the Sixth Committee (and consequently 7 In some cases the facilitator is not bureau-appointed as some resolutions are negotiated under so called “country led process” (e. g. resolution on UNCITRAL is always facilitated by Austria). 8 Resolution No. A/RES/74/187, adopted by the General Assembly on December 18, 2019 (all resolutions are available here: https://documents.un.org/prod/ods.nsf/home.xsp).

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