Its not all about the beaches

Apologies for the lack of entries over the last few weeks: we have both been a bit busy. But hopefully this week there will be a few more just to let you know what we have been doing.

Despite a number of blog entries showing pictures of beaches, trips round the island and diving, we are actually doing some work aswell, and some of it is actually bearing fruit!

As I mentioned when we first started here, a part of the work that I am doing is advising the government on human rights issues. One particular area that I have spent quite a lot of time working on is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This is one of the foundation pillars of international human rights law which, along with the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights codifies the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The ICCPR sets out the civil and political rights of individuals, such as the right to life, prohibition of torture, freedom of movement, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the right to family life etc. Vanuatu was one of only 27 of the 192 UN member countries that had taken no action to sign up to or become a party to the convention. Given that the Vanuatu constitution already recognises many of the rights set out in the ICCPR and it is also one of the few countries of the 27 that does not have the death penalty it raised the question of whether there was any reason why Vanuatu could not look to take steps to recognise these issues internationally.

After several months of research, briefings, meetings and consultations it was felt that there was no reason and so the minister of foreign affairs put forward the proposal that Vanuatu sign the ICCPR. The Council of Ministers, which is the Executive limb of government, approved the proposal and on Thursday 29th November Vanuatu signed the ICCPR in New York, becoming the 166th country to have taken action on it. (And only the second country in the Pacific to have done so.)