International organisations

Australia welcomes Greece’s continued efforts to improve its human rights framework including through ratification of the Istanbul Convention. Australia commends Greece on concrete steps made in respect of: LGBTI rights; gender equality; the rights of persons with a disability; controls on the armed forces and police; the status of Greece's Muslim minority in the Thrace region; and, combating anti-Semitism and hate speech.

Australia commends Suriname for taking steps towards amending the Military Penal Code to abolish the death penalty.  

Australia welcomes the actions taken on human rights by Papua New Guinea since its last UPR appearance. This includes efforts to address gender-based violence and progress critical legislation to improve women’s lives, and the passage of legislation in 2020 to establish an Independent Commission Against Corruption. Australia encourages Papua New Guinea to realise the rights to health and education by allocating sufficient resources to improve outcomes and by continuing to prioritise COVID-19 vaccination coverage.

The 39th session of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a United Nations process that considers the human rights record of each UN Member State. It is a mechanism of the UN Human Rights Council.

The Multilateral Placements Program, including the UN Junior Professional Officer (JPO) Program, provides multilateral organisations with funding to place Australian professionals in positions across the multilateral system.

The human rights situation in Yemen is dire. The fourth report by the UN Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts on Yemen outlines a litany of human rights violations and abuses, and violations of international humanitarian law by parties to the conflict including those involving indiscriminate and disproportionate airstrikes and shelling, attacks on medical facilities and schools, failing to abide by international humanitarian law principles, humanitarian restrictions such as obstacles to access to food and healthcare, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, gender-based violence, including sexual violence, torture, denial of fair trial rights, persecution of and violations and abuses against journalists, human rights defenders, persons belonging to minorities, migrants, internally displaced persons and shocking violations and abuses of children's rights in the period July 2020 to June 2021.

Mr Chair, I have the honour of delivering this statement on behalf of Canada, Iceland, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and my own country Australia. We take this opportunity to reaffirm our strong support for the Human Rights Council and to thank the President of the Human Rights Council for her report to the plenary and her interactive engagement with the Third Committee.

More than a year has passed since the people of Belarus saw their hopes to elect a democratically elected leader of the country brutally dashed

Australia is deeply troubled by continued executions in Iran, including of juvenile offenders, and notes that Iran continues to carry out the death penalty at one of the highest rates in the world. We urge Iran to impose a moratorium on the death penalty.