Today, the ICJ announced that former Argentinean Senator Hipolito Solari Yrigoyen, who is a Member of the ICJ since 1993, had been elected as a Member of the UN Human Rights Committee.
Senator Solari Yrigoyen, a lawyer and respected human rights defender, was first elected to Argentina’s Senate in 1973. He was Chairperson of the Human Rights Committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and was adviser to former Argentinian President Raul Alfonsin (1983-1987). The Senator was a victim of three bomb attacks in Argentina and in one of which he was seriously injured. Then he became a “disappeared person” and was expelled to France in 1977. He lived in exile in Paris for six years thereafter. Senator Yrigoyen is now Chairperson of the Buenos-Aires and Paris-based organisation New Human Rights.
The UN Human Rights Committee is the body that examines reports which are presented by the States under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It is composed of 18 elected members, mainly jurists, who are experts in the field of human rights.
The ICJ also welcomes the recent nomination, by the United Nations Corrosion on Human Rights, of Dr. Asma Jahangir (photo), as Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions. She succeeds in this position Dr. Bacre Waly Ndiaye of Senegal.
Dr. Jahangir is a lawyer and a respected human rights defender from Pakistan. She is internationally famous for her stance in defence of the rights of women, children and the poor in Pakistan. Dr. Jahangir is Chairperson and founding member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (ICJ affiliate) and a Member of the ICJ.