Prepared by International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion

On 14 July 2015, during its 114th session, the Human Rights Committee (HRC) commenced the process of drafting a General Comment on the right to life, to revise the existing General Comment at Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. They called for submissions on the views of national human rights institutions, non-governmental organisations, and academia. The summary of what took place can be found at this link and here the over 100 submissions they received. During its 115th session, the Committee commenced its first reading of the draft text.

The HRC then completed its review and revision of the draft text at its 120th session in July 2017, published it on its website – Draft General Comment on Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – Right to life – and invited all interested stakeholders to comment on the new draft by 6 October 2017. This time around, they received some 166 submissions including from some 23 states, most of them in the global north; 7 UN agencies, specialized bodies and experts; 33 academic and other professionals; 3 national human rights and other institutions; and over 100 NGOs. These submissions can be found here.

Of the 71 paragraphs in the July 2017 version of the draft General Comment, only Paragraph 9 is directly about abortion. Yet, a great many submissions from NGOs were anti-abortion and many others from abortion rights advocates, as was the case in the previous round.