The Government of the Republic of Vanuatu is pleased to have engaged with the UPR process in both its first and second cycles. In total the Government has had 259 recommendations made to it by Member States. Following our second cycle, the Ministry of Justice as the lead ministry for human rights in Vanuatu worked with Vanuatu’s Human Rights Committee to develop and design the UPR National Implementation Plan (2014- 2018), the first country in the Pacific to do so.
The Plan identified and highlighted the implementation strategy of each of the recommendations. In taking ownership of the UPR process, the recommendations were divided into thematic areas for incorporation into existing national development priorities such as the Vanuatu Government’s Priority Action Agenda (PAA) and the Planning Long, Acting Short Strategic Framework (PLAS) as well as various ministry annual and corporate plans as it relates to human rights around poverty
reduction, education, social protection, health and with the MDGs and its successor the SGDs among others.
Further the Government’s National Sustainable Development Plan 2016-2030 or the People’s Plan and its monitoring and evaluation framework provide the Government’s commitments towards realizing basic human rights in the form of sustainable development goals and priorities. Of the 109 recommendations that Vanuatu received in the second cycle, 95 were
accepted and adopted by Vanuatu’s Council of Ministers. These recommendations are the subject of this report.