Canada: I’d like to thank our colleagues who are involved today. Mr Chair, many of our colleagues had to leave and come back to our informal, because they were attempting to polish negotiations at once and judging from my own experience, it is very difficult to follow even one negotiation at this CND… So, I think the solution to this problem of course is to make progress on all fronts, and it’s our turn tonight. So, with a bit of optimism, I hope we can we move forward. I’ll give you a brief update on where we are. We’re looking at a number of different categories for our paragraphs, about 10 of them are in red, at least six or seven are agreed with reservations from some delegations, or with an explicit reference that position on that one type of paragraph is going to be linked to other language or other paragraphs so maybe one or two asterisks. There are a number of paragraphs, mostly operative paragraphs where if we can agree on the list of services or the exact definition of marginalization, they will become unblocked. And unfortunately, there are between 15 and 20, paragraphs, on which there is no agreement, including the title. So, it’s a daunting task in front of us to get through all of these paragraphs. With that said, I think we can start off on the right foot, and perhaps look at some of the paragraphs that seem to enjoy consensus with conditions, Mr. Chair. So in that optimistic spirit, I will leave it to you. And thank you again for chairing these sessions.
Chair: My approach is that what is agreed in informals to be put in the basket. Which paragraphs were agreed? Let us start there.
Canada: pp0,1,3,7alt,11bis,15bis,18bis,18 and op11, op12 has been marked as agreed but we may or may not have agreement on them.
pp0
Chair: Was this agreed on?
Canada: We had some technical difficulties so we are not 100% certain.
Chair: Can delegates agree with pp0 as is on the screen?
Canada: We usually start with pp1. This was an attempt to facilitate certain concerns.
Chair: Do delegates agree with pp1?
USA: There is a standard form to referencing the UNGASS outcome document, will that change be made in editing?
Secretariat: Yes.
Chair: pp1 agreed by COW.
pp3
Canada: An other reference to the founding conventions. We discuss social services here – agreed in informals.
Chair: Excellent. Adopted by COW.
pp7
Canada: Many delegatios found difficulties with discussing human right across the text, but here we came to an understanding.
Chair: pp7alt is agreed by COW.
pp11bis
Canada: This is a collection of paragraphs dealing with reaffirmation of previous documents.
Chair: Delegates, do you agree? Agreed by COW.
pp15bis
Canada: We have to look at pp15 because our editing process eexperienced some difficulties. After the reference to OP3, „further recalling its resolution” I believe this is the precise wording agreed at informals, but I am open for corrections.
Australia: We would like to retain some of the language that was in the middle of the former, pp 15. And of course, noting that there needs to be a resolution to text at op one. I think before we could agree to, to firm up the language here for both pp 15, and pp 15bis. Because if we agree to PB 15 biz. In this context, it will be difficult to insert back in the language that we wish to have retained.
Canada: There is broad consensus on this, but pp15 remains open. We have 3 options: leave it on the screen as is, approve and return to it or combine the two – 15 and 15bis.
Australia: We are happy with the language, but are hesitant to agree to lock pp15bis down at this point in time.
Chair: Do I understand that you prefer to discuss this during informals?
Australia: After the discussion of pp1, we will have a clearer picture.
Chair: Okay, this goes back to informals.
pp18bis
Canada: I believe 18 and 18bis are similar in structure and are both agreed on during informals. We should consider the order of paragraphs in whole – can we put that before the floor today?
Chair: Can we agree with pp18? Agreed by COW.
pp18bis and pp7
Chair: Agreed by COW. With pp7alt agreed, will pp7 be deleted?
Canada: I will make a note to check in informals – will be confirmed for the next COW.
Russia: With pp7alt, we agree if the original proposal is deleted.
Canada: I believe the USA proposed pp7alt. Was pp7alt replaced by pp7 or are we referring to pp14 – there was a bit of back and forth on this, so I am not entirely certain where we are standing right now.
USA: We proposed pp7alt to replace pp7.
Chair: Can we agree to delete pp7? Agreed by COW.
op11
Canada: It has been very generic so we are working towards a better solution. We made progress in defining the scope of the resolution, we can put it in the basket hopefully. I recommend we ask for agreement.
Russia: Today we made significant progress, many terms have been clarified, but we are compelled to retain the discussion of this OP once 17 and 9 have been finalized. We have no ojections to op12.
Chair: Can you tell us why you dont agree with op11?
Russia: In the text of this draft, UNODC has several tasks that Russia can not agree to (?) Until we decide on the list of tasks in pp17 and op9, we will not be able to agree to this pp on reporting.
Chair: I understand. Can op12 be agreed here? Agreed by COW.
pp2alt
Canada: It might be a good idea perhaps to visit some of the controversial paragraphs very briefly, to see if any delegation is now in a position to agree, because as I say most of these paragraphs starting with pp 12. We’re, we’re very close to agreement. Obviously, some will depend on outcomes that are beyond our control this evening but it may be nice to just feel our basket as much as possible. Before we take on the bigger cuts.
Egypt: Agreed. We can move on.
Russia: It’s always unpleasant to be in a situation where you find yourself between a consensus approval of a paragraph or mother standing in the way of it. It is excellent that people have shown flexibility but we would like to draw your attention to the following. When this draft resolution was originally being discussed. We didn’t have a conclusive understanding of which groups were covered when we were talking of people in an unfavorable social situation. Currently in this text we have formulation. And we would like to say that this type of persons so socially mobile marginalized people doesn’t cover. Law enforcement related aspects now under Russian legislation. Rationalization would refer to problems regarding access to employment social security, health care and education. But this would not apply to those in prisons, or those who have been involved in offenses relating to drug trafficking, and also the Russian Federation believes that also this paragraph contains the finalized weighting from FY 1988 convention doesn’t apply to the scope of this resolution. Therefore, we would suggest deleting this paragraph. Thank you.
UK: UK would like to maintain this reserve for the simple reason that, although we’re referencing documents from 1988, and we can in principle, agree to have a linkage to the language that we use throughout the resolution. We believe that times have moved on since 1988 and moving back to a situation where we describe these individuals as abusers, would be a backward step for the CND. However, having said that, in the spirit of compromise. We are very happy to work with the chair to find a solution, and then to remove the reservations throughout the PPS, if we’re able to maintain more non stigmatizing version of the language in the operational paragraphs.
Canada: there’s a couple of things I find difficult to understand at this, at this juncture. This paragraph is proposed by the US and it supported by Canada, Russia, China, Australia, Netherlands and Turkey, discusses fairly recently so sudden change apart from the rest of the delegate is is surprising. Secondly, in terms of scope, citing relevant passages of the drug conventions which many delegations hold so dear as the cornerstone of all our efforts in this area is the right, the right way to go. The other drug convention that we’re setting our 6171. So, in order for there to be balance. I think when delegation thought it would only be fair to mention the intermediate one. And you might argue or consider that, putting someone in prison doesn’t marginalize them, or charge them with an offense to not marginalizing because, in fact, a breach of the law is certainly deserving of appropriate action. But certainly we can turn that around and say that marginalized people are not more often in contact with the criminal justice system. And in appropriate cases and a minor in nature. There could be alternatives were the kind of services we’re talking about here. And in fact, if the access to those services was ensured, we would probably have less contact with the criminal justice system for cases of a minor or major nature. So for now Canada would prefer to maintain this paragraph, we think, Egypt, and the UK for their very strong flexibility. And we hope that other delegations could be consistent with the positions adopted in informals on this important matter.
Chair: Yes, I see Russia was a sponsor of the pp so in the interest of transparency: why did you change your mind?
Russia: We consistently support the implementation of the conventions, so we support language that emphasize the importance of those conventions. This was at the very beginning of the process. Now that we are talking about „marginalized” people, questions about criminal justice are not relevant to this resolution. We are open to discuss this, but we would need to make changes to op1 if we were to agree to this one.
Chair: I can see we havent reached consensus here yet. Thank you to all delegations who have shown flexibilty and I call on Russia as well to practice flexibilty.
pp9 and pp10
Canada: PP 10 had reservations from Egypt. We have a reservation from France on pp9. My search for solution was that we should recall all recent policy documents.
France: We are talking about three different paragraphs. We made several proposals and in order to move closer to consensus, we demonstrated flexibility, eg recalling the 2019 declaration that is not a policy document. It is important to us to not place it on the same level as other documents as this declaration only reaffirmed existing ideas. We propose to discuss the order of these references: 2019 to be moved to the end and begin with 2016. This is all so that we can agree to the mention of all these documents.
Chair: Can we agree on the substance?
Egypt: We have no problems with the substance, but the order – we wanted to be chronological. Concerning pp2, I received something from the Capitol.
Chair: We will finish this first and come back to pp2. Substance is agreed, order is not.
pp2
Egypt: We still reserve.
Chair: Until when?
Egypt: Until we know the scope of the resolution.
pp11
Chair: I have Egypt and Russia’s reservation here.
Russia: In our view, marginalized people and people in the criminal justice system are two different categories of people and we should not confuse these two notions. We know this is agreed language.
Egypt: We agree with Russia on pp11 and pp3. Our reservation remains until we know the scope of the resolution.
Chair: We come to the end of our hour. One of the main issues remain the scope and the definition of marginalized people. As a next step, it would be important to focus on that.
Canada: You are absolutely right. As Russia mentioned, considering the progress we made, I might ask if we can consider one or two more pps – pp12 and pp12bis are very reflective of the services that all delegations seem comfortable discussing.
Chair: Okay.
pp12
Agreed by COW
pp12bis
Canada: In this section, we know how important various documents are to delegations so we wanted to include them, but we haven’t come to a close here. We have three reservations, but I believe this is a direct quote from the UNGASS language.
Chair: Iran, Russia and Egypt have reservations.
Egypt: They are all the same – we have reservations because we don’t know the scope of the resolution. We agree that the language is previously agreed on, but we don’t know whether include it in this resolution until we know the scope.
Egypt: If we can go back to pp2 – can we have our reservation on the scope. We agree with the language.
Canada: We will endeavour to come to an agreement tonight.
Chair: Now 5 minutes break.