Thank you, Mr President.
The United Kingdom welcomes South Africa's engagement with the Universal Periodic Review mechanism and its response to the Report of the Working Group. We also welcome the steps that South Africa has taken to make progress on human rights since its last review, including efforts to implement a National Strategic Plan on addressing Gender-Based Violence and Femicide.
The UK is pleased that South Africa fully supports our recommendation to strengthen measures to address violence against marginalized groups by enacting the Hate Crimes Bill in early 2023. We believe this is an important step to promote accountability and safeguard vulnerable groups.
We reiterate our commitment to working constructively with South Africa as it seeks to strengthen its protection of human rights.
The UK attaches great importance to the concrete steps that South Africa is committing to take to implement the recommendations it accepted, and we therefore strongly encourage South Africa to provide an update on its progress through submitting a mid-term report at the appropriate time.
Thank you.
