What does an elected expert on the UN human rights treaty monitoring committees do? Ilvija Pūce, a legal research counsel in the Senate's Department of Administrative Cases, who has been a member of the UN Committee against Torture for four years, explains this in her book "Latvia at the United Nations".

The book, published by the Chancery of the President of Latvia, arrives at a time when Latvia is standing for election to the UN Security Council for the term 2026-2027.  The Security Council is the UN body responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security, with five permanent members and ten member states, elected for two-year terms. Latvia's task is to convince two-thirds of the UN member states, or at least 129 countries, of the suitability of its candidacy. "This application is an acknowledgment of Latvia's ability to assume responsibility for international peace and security, the protection of international law, and the effectiveness and modernisation of the UN system itself," Edgars Rinkēvičs, President of Latvia, writes in the book.

The book demonstrates that Latvia's candidacy for the UN Security Council is not a spur-of-the-moment decision, but long-standing and deliberate efforts of Latvian diplomats and experts. The authors of the book are officials who have been or are closely involved in various aspects of Latvia's UN membership since the recognition of country's independence.

Ilvija Pūce explains one of the aspects – the committees that monitor and assess how countries that have ratified UN human rights treaties and declarations are doing in terms of respecting relevant rights.

Ilvija Pūce has worked in the field of human rights for more than 20 years, mostly in the non-governmental sector: at the Latvian Centre for Human Rights, at the Danish Institute against Torture (DIGNITY), for 12 years as a member of the Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture and from 2020 to 2023 as a member of the UN Committee for the Prevention of Torture. Moreover, since 2020, Ilvija has been a legal research counsel at the Supreme Court.

 

Information prepared by

Rasma Zvejniece, Head of the Division of Communication of the Supreme Court

E-mail: rasma.zvejniece@at.gov.lv, telephone: +371 67020396, +371 28652211