Press release of the Inter-Parliamentary Union
Geneva, 13 January 1998
N° 67

AUSTRALIAN MP ELECTED CHAIRMAN OF IPU HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE

Mr Clyde Holding, Member of the Australian Parliament and former Minister, was today unanimously elected Chairman of the Inter-Parliamentary Union's (IPU) Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians. The Committee is the IPU body which takes up complaints involving individual cases of parliamentarians whose rights have been violated, such as the right to freedom of speech.

The election of Mr Holding took place on the first day of the Committee's 80th session, being held at the headquarters of the IPU in Geneva from 13 to 16 January. Senator François Autain, of France, was elected Vice-Chairman. Mr Holding replaces Senator Hugo Batalla (Uruguay), who served as Chairman for 1997 but remains on the Committee as a titular member.

Mr Holding is a long-time member of the IPU's human rights body, having first joined the Committee as a substitute member in 1991. He became a titular member in 1995, and was Vice-Chairman of the Committee for 1997. Mr Holding, who is a lawyer by profession, has been active in the field of human rights protection throughout his career. He has been a Member of the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties in his country since 1955, is a Member of Amnesty International (Victorian Branch), and a Member of the Parliamentary Group of Amnesty International, and as a lawyer has appeared in a range of civil liberty cases. Elected to the Parliament of the State of Victoria in 1963, and to the Australian Parliament (House of Representatives) in 1977, Mr Holding has held a series of ministerial posts, including Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, and Minister for Immigration and Minister assisting the Prime Minister in Multicultural Affairs. Mr Holding is a member of the Australian Labour Party.

Senator Autain, a Doctor of Medicine and member of the French Socialist Party, is currently Questor of the French Senate and member of its Committee on Social Affairs. He has also held several ministerial posts, including Secretary of State to the Minister of Social Affairs and National Solidarity, and Secretary of State to the Minister of Defence. Senator Autain has been a member of the IPU Committee since 1994 - first as a substitute member, and then since 1996 as a titular member.

The other members of the Committee who are in Geneva this week for the 80th session are Mr François Borel (Switzerland), Mr Hilarion Etong (Cameroon), Mr M. Samarasinghe (Sri Lanka).

The Committee has on its agenda the cases (both confidential and public cases) of 177 Members of Parliament, in 32 countries, who are, or have been, subjected to various arbitrary actions, such as being stripped of their mandate, threatened, detained or prosecuted. Some cases concern assassinated parliamentarians. The Committee first attempts to reach a satisfactory settlement of a case through confidential examination and communication with the authorities of the country concerned. However, if no satisfactory settlement is reached within a reasonable period of time, or if it concerns an assassinated MP, then the Committee issues a public report to urge prompter action. Currently, the majority of the cases on the Committee's agenda are public ones, of 138 MPs in the following 13 countries: Burundi, Cambodia, Colombia, Djibouti, Gambia, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Togo and Turkey.

The IPU Committee meets four times a year, and since it began its work in 1977, it has contributed to the satisfactory settlement of a large proportion of the 900 cases it has declared admissible in 83 countries.

This week, the Committee will also discuss concrete follow-up by the IPU and its member-parliaments to the resolution adopted in September 1997 by the IPU Council (governing body) on ways to mark the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948.

For more information, contact: Robin Newmann, IPU Information Officer
tel. (41.22) 919.41.25