An anti CAA protest (File photo)

NEW DELHI: The UN Human Rights Council is yet to file an intervention petition in the Supreme Court as amicus curiae in a case challenging the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

Responding to a question by TOI, the spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said, “The amicus brief is still being processed, and is being handled here in Geneva.” This means the rights body has not engaged an Indian attorney to represent it in India.

While it might be a first in India, the OHCHR has filed similar amicus curiae petitions in many countries in the world. Sources in the UN said such petitions were normally filed in countries which were believed to have an independent judiciary.

In the past few years, the OHCHR has filed similar petitions in the US Supreme Court (2012) to support petitioners Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel versus Donald Rumsfeld , former defence secretary, on the issue of torture, as well as in two other cases — one in the Supreme Court and one in the US Court of Appeals in the fourth circuit. Almost all of them concerned the use of torture.

The UN filed similar petitions in Brazil ’s Supreme Court regarding the denial of abortion services, made in response to the Brazilian government’s response to the outbreak of Zika virus, and a second on the constitutionality of a differentiated disciplinary regime in that country.

It has filed in the constitutional tribunal of Peru, as well as in the constitutional court of South Korea, and even the federal high court of Nigeria last month. The OHCHR has intervened similarly in a case in the Supreme Court of UK on abortion in Northern Ireland. The European Court for Human Rights received two such petitions in 2011 and 2015.

