The Committee is made up of independent people who are responsible for monitoring the application of the international Pact on civil and political rights, one of the two pillars of the UN. M. Fathalla is currently the Egyptian ambassador to the Netherlands.

NGOs often criticise the policy of electing diplomats to Committees which monitor State treaties, on the grounds of a lack of independence due to their links with the governments that they serve as civil servents. They see this as "a violation of the criteria for high morality in article 28 of the Pact".

M.Fathalla is not the only Egyptian case. There is also Naéla Gabr, former ambassador in Geneva, who is today the assistant to the Egyptian Minister for Foreign Affairs for international organisations and member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination towards Women.

Other countries do the same. The Ecuadorian ambassador to Washington, M. Luis Gallegos Chiriboga, member of the UN Committee against Torture, and M.José Augusto Lindgren Alves, former Brazilian ambassador to Sofia, still a diplomat in Brazil and a member of the UN Committee against Racial Discrimination. The Algerian, Lazhari Bouzid, elected to the UN Human Rights Committee at the same as the Egyptian Fathalla, is a Senator in his country. According to Abdel Wahab Hani, "he is active in parliamentary diplomacy in Algeria and he defends the official Algerian line that denies the most serious human rights violations and crimes in the country, questioning the Committee’s independence and the impartiality of its judgements".

Source : Juan Gasparini/ Human Rights Tribune