Assemblea has taken part in the 60th session of the UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva, where Spain’s Universal Periodic Review was adopted
A delegation of the Catalan National Assembly (Assemblea Nacional Catalana) has participated in the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, on the occasion of the adoption of the final report of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on Spain, which reviews its implementation of the treaties and conventions the state is subject to.
Assemblea board member Ariadna Heinz took the floor to call on Spain to implement the UPR recommendations, to put an end to the unfounded prosecutions against Catalans and to ensure an impartial application of the Amnesty Law. Heinz also recalled that application of Article 1 of the ICCPR on the right to self-determination of peoples is being denied the Catalan people, and several other violations stem from this denial.
On this cycle of the UPR, UN member states have made several recommendations to Spain, some related to the excessive use of force by police during protests, the independence of the judiciary, discrimination, hate speech, the criminalization of dissenting voices, and the abuse of freedoms. These are in line with what Assemblea and the UNPO called for in a report submitted to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights last October.
Despite the review taking note of Spain’s failure to uphold several of its human rights obligations, the delegation failed to address many of them in their intervention during the UPR review. In fact, the Spanish delegation’s response deliberately omitted mentioning the linguistic discrimination that Catalan people suffer and the illegal use of spyware tools against dissidence, in what is known as the Catalangate scandal.
The intervention before the UN Human Rights Council was a collaboration with Geneva-based ONG Geneva for Human Rights, and the Unrepresented Peoples and Nations Organization (UNPO), which have urged UN member states to ensure that the UPR recommendations to Spain are translated into concrete guarantees abiding by international treaties and conventions.
The UPR is a mechanism designed to monitor how UN member states implement the Treaties they are subject to in terms of Human Rights, with the goal of addressing the concerns and prompting, supporting, promoting and protecting human rights in every country. Each country is reviewed every five years, and it is the other UN member states that undertake the review.
Taking part in the Human Rights Council is part of the international advocacy work undertaken by the Catalan National Assembly, which is one of the underpinning lines of action of the organization, to bring Spain’s abuses before international mechanisms, forums and bodies, and to internationalize Catalonia’s struggle for self-determination.
Assemblea’s collaboration with the UNPO is part of the effort of internationalization and began in 2018. The joint work has been very fruitful: it has led to the publication of reports such as Tools of Repression (2022) and In the Name of Unity (2024), as well as complaints submitted to UN Special Rapporteurs in 2022 regarding Catalangate, and in 2024 about the use of anti-terrorism to target Catalans.
Watch the entire intervention here: