Right Agenda for the General Assembly.

• Author: Conaway, Janelle
• Position: Organization of American States General Assembly meeting on human rights - Brief Article

HUMAN RIGHTS will be at the top of the agenda when the OAS General Assembly meets in San Jose, Costa Rica, June 3-5. The Hemisphere's foreign affairs ministers will consider proposed reforms designed to strengthen the inter-American human rights system.

Costa Rica is the headquarters for the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The Court and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, based at OAS headquarters in Washington, are the the twin pillars of the system.

In recent years, a growing number of OAS member countries, nongovernmental organizations, and the human rights bodies themselves have talked about the need to strengthen human rights protections in the Hemisphere. Costa Rican president Miguel Angel Rodriguez Echeverria announced more than a year ago that, his government would highlight the issue at the 2001 General Assembly.

His government has proposed a series of reforms, including development of a follow-up mechanism to ensure compliance with Commission and Court decisions, and measures to increase financing by directing more OAS resources to human rights and by creating a supplementary human rights fund outside the OAS budget. Costa Rica also proposes making the Commission and the Court permanently functioning bodies within five years. Currently, both entities meet only in periodic sessions.

Costa...