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Mr Chairman
The General Assembly has a clear mandate to consider human rights situations.
We have passed resolutions expressing our collective concern about some of the most concerning human rights situations for more than thirty years. In many cases, this international attention has helped encourage States to improve their human rights situations and they have since turned into strong promoters of human rights.
New Zealand is committed to dialogue and cooperation on situations where there is evidence of serious violations of human rights. We believe resolutions should only be adopted after negotiations with the countries and regions concerned and with the broadest consensus possible. The General Assembly has an important role to play in this regard.
We have listened very carefully to those colleagues that have expressed concerns about duplicating our work in Geneva. In our view, however, the Universal Periodic Review process in Geneva does not replace the consideration of country resolutions for a range of reasons. One of them, for example, is that Myanmar will not be reviewed under UPR until 2011.
There continue to be serious questions about the situation of human rights in Myanmar raised in the draft resolution before us. This Committee needs to deal with those questions. My delegation will be voting against this no action motion, and we hope all others can do the same.
