Guyana’s human rights record will be examined by the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Working Group for the third time on Wednesday, 29 January 2020 in a meeting that will be webcast live at http://webtv.un.org/. The meeting will be conducted in Geneva beginning from 09:00 hours and concluding at 12:30 hrs.
The delegation of Guyana will be headed by Ambassador John R. Deep Ford, Permanent Representative of Guyana to the UN Office at Geneva
Guyana is one of the 14 States to be reviewed by the UPR Working Group during its upcoming session taking place from 20 to 31 January. Guyana’s first and second UPR reviews (can be found here https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/UPR/Pages/GYIndex.aspx) took place in May 2010 and January 2015, respectively.
The documents on which the reviews are based are: 1) national report – information provided by the State under review; 2) information contained in the reports of independent human rights experts and groups, known as the Special Procedures, human rights treaty bodies, and other UN entities; 3) information provided by other stakeholders including national human rights institutions, regional organizations and civil society groups.
The UPR is a unique process which involves a periodic review of the human rights records of all 193 UN Member States. Since its first meeting was held in April 2008, all 193 UN member States have been reviewed twice within the first and second UPR cycles. During the third UPR cycle, States are again expected to spell out steps they have taken to implement recommendations posed during their previous reviews which they committed to follow-up on, as well as to highlight recent human rights developments in the country.
