3rd Meeting, 38th Session - Chairpersons of the Human Rights Treaty Bodies

Good morning, distinguished participants. I declare open the 38th meeting of Chairpersons of Human Rights Treaty Bodies. This is a public meeting and being webcast. We will begin this morning's meeting with Agenda Item 4, Update on New Developments Other discussions. Under this item, chairs will have an opportunity to exchange views on developments since the previous meeting and provide updates on the implementation of recommendations adopted at the 37th meeting. UN Liquidity Crisis, and we will consider documents entitled Implementation Chart, and the exceptional working method, NGO civil society participation in treaty body sessions. I will give the floor to the Secretary to remind us of the discussions and to introduce the documents, starting with the implementation chart and exceptional measures. So Jennifer Craft, please, you have the floor. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

Good morning.

Good morning, dear chairs, dear experts and colleagues. I will present— so the secretariat has prepared what's called an implementation chart of all of your conclusions that the chairs adopted at the 37th meeting of the chairs. And I will be going through— [SPEAKING FRENCH] It's not working. I will be going through only the first section, which was on the exceptional measures that were adopted last year in order to ensure the continuity and functions of the treaty bodies in view of the situation created by the liquidity crisis. So there were 6 or 7 of these recommendations, and we have here on the screen what the Secretariat and what the treaty bodies did to respond to these recommendations in the last year. So the recommendations— I'm just going to read a few of them— were that part of the meeting time of the pre- and post-session working groups may be integrated into the sessional work program. [SPEAKING IN NATIVE LANGUAGE] Oh.

Sorry.

And the next one, annual reports may be prepared by written procedure and subject to a silent procedure. Number 21, list of issues and list of issues prior to reporting may be prepared intercessionally by written procedure and subject to the silent procedure.

I forgot what I wanted to—

Apologies.

It's right here.

Number 22, to further simplify the process of elaborating and adopting list of issues prior to reporting. Number 23, repetitive use or prima facie inadmissibility decisions may be prepared by written procedure and subject to the silent procedure. 24, consultations for the drafting of general comments or recommendations or other statements may take place in writing through informal online meetings, and also that the committees may seek voluntary contributions in cooperation with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in particular on the use of digital technologies to support online and hybrid meetings with stakeholders and to ensure inclusive, accessible participation, and on the establishment of reasonable accommodation funds, and fund for participation of persons with disabilities in the work of all committees. Thank you. Next, I will just go through some of the committee's work on what has been done to implement some of these recommendations. For example, SIDA held meetings of the Working Group on Communications and the Working Group on Inquiries during the 91st and 92nd sessions by using plenary meeting time. As the official working group meetings had been canceled. They said that they would adopt lists of issues and lists of issues prior to review during its 93rd session if the 95th pre-sessional working group was to be converted into plenary meeting time. CIDAW also prepared lists of issues and lists of issues prior to review online during the inter-sessional period in June and October 2025 by informally moving the two one-week pre-sessional working group sessions online with formal adoption at the subsequent session. Under the revised Rules of Procedure, which CDAW adopted at the 92nd session in February 2026, the adoption of list of issues and list of issues prior to review took place online without the need to formally adopt them at the subsequent session. Thank you. SIDAW also held some regional consultations online and others in hybrid format or in person, depending on the financial support received for these general recommendations. Third, amongst other implementation of these recommendations, in 2025, the August session was cancelled, so the Committee met online to discuss the draft General Recommendation 40, on reparations as an exceptional measure, and they used United Nations Volunteers interpreters to facilitate the communication. The Committee also discussed the use of the silent procedure for urgent intersessional work, such as situations requiring action under the early warning and urgent action procedures, at its 117th session in April 2026. The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in March 2026 piloted a fast-track procedure for the consideration of initial reports of least developed countries and small island states, according to which once the initial report is submitted, the Committee directly scheduled a dialogue with the delegation of a State Party. And this is the last one I will mention. The Committee on Civil and Political Rights, since the last annual meeting of the chairpersons in 2025, decided to continue to integrate the working group on individual communications into the plenary meeting time. The CRC said it would integrate part of the pre-session working group into the 101st session to be held tentatively in September 2026. So this— the remaining sections of this implementation chart outline also what the committees and the secretariat did to change some of its working methods on individual communications and how to implement the Addis Ababa guidelines as well as reprisals. So I just wanted to share with you some of these exceptional measures and what was recommended and what was implemented. Thank you very much.

Yes, please. I'll give the floor to Elena.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jennifer, for this presentation. Just let's show the other one, the UN Liquidity, yeah, first. So these documents have been included in your package of documents. These are documents that we are updating all the time to figure out what it is that is going on with the treaty bodies. And what I wanted to show is just some graphs of the impact of the liquidity situation. Just to realize the extent to which the landscape for implementing your mandates has really changed drastically. So if we can zoom on the two charts. So the two charts, This is the meeting time. The dark part for 2025 is the actual meetings held, and the light blue at the bottom is the meetings that have been cancelled. So 40% of meetings have been cancelled. The next chart, the green, you see the— this is 2026. So at the top part you have the meetings which were actually held. The middle part, the yellow, is the meetings that we are planning to have until the end of the year. So that's the second sessions of committees except for CMW. And the light green at the bottom is the meetings that have been cancelled. So 43% of meetings have been reduced in 2026.

Thank And you.

if we just go up— thank you. No, just further down. So just here. So this is the time that is needed to clear the current backlog of committees with 2 sessions a year. So you can see that 2 committees are at 5 years, 1 at 4, and so on and so forth. So just to compare, when we did the same exercise for the SG— report 2 years ago, so 2023, average time was 2 years. So now we are— we've almost doubled the current backlog and the time it would take with reduced meeting time to go through the backlog.

Without new reports.

Exactly. Without any new reports being produced or being reviewed. Let's go further down, please. Just to the second page. Yes, just stop here. So these are the state party reviews per year. So you can see the very obvious decline. Currently, we are estimating to complete 85 to 86 reviews by the end of 2026. But you can see since 2024, when the more severe part of the liquidity situation came, came into being because we have been in a liquidity situation since 2018. And then if we go down— if we just go to the next one. Yeah, just this is the status of what we are doing this year. The orange is the first session and the blue is the second session. So in total, we— the bodies will adopt 86 concluding observations. And let's go down. Let's just go further, move it further down. Here is a chart of State Party reports received over the period even before the GA resolution was adopted. See a very severe decline since 2019. These are per year, and this includes also the reports received pursuant to the simplified reporting procedure. So the— at least the intended aim of the simplified reporting procedure, which was to generate more reports has not been achieved arguably, and I take Mr. Kutz's point. Why would you submit a report if there is already a huge backlog and you know that it's going to take 4 or 5 years for your report to be reviewed? But still, I think this is a telling chart. And then let's go to the next one. Thank you. Yes, so this one just shows the gap on how the implementation of GA resolution 68, 68 has been over the years, so 2015 was the first year the GA resolution kicked into effect, and you can see that 2015, '17, those 3 years, because we used to have biennium, a budget for 2 years, was the only year where actually the treaty bodies managed to meet— for the same time that the General Assembly granted additional meeting time because when the GA resolution was adopted, we also got the staff that corresponded to that additional meeting time, some 20 additional meeting weeks, yeah, from 70 to some 92 meeting weeks. But you see that since then, beginning from 18-19, which was the next biennium, the assessed meeting time and the actual meeting time— so assessed is is at the top and the actual is at the bottom, the blue. There is a huge gap. And that gap is the gap in staffing. So meeting time was approved, but the staffing was not approved. So I think, you know, when we speak about chronic underfunding and treaty bodies being able to implement their mandates, I think we also need to be mindful of, yeah, the practical implementation of the resolution. And then— Can we just move it down? So this is the status of individual communications. So, again, the deliverables have had to be reduced to match the support the actual support that is with petition sessions. And you see, of course, the huge reduction for the Human Rights Committee, which has the most communications that are being reviewed. And then the final one is the work of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, where you see that its missions have—

Yes.

Been halved, so from 8 to 9 missions in 2025, they managed to do 4 missions. This year they've done 3 missions and they're hoping to do another 2, but I think when we're looking at these reductions, it's— we are speaking between 40 to 50% reduction. And I also wanted to mention the work of the capacity building program, because they have received a very little amount from their allotted budget. It was as low as 13%, one-three, in 2025. So this means that the number of activities they're planning to implement and their work plan on how to engage with States to be able to report to the treaty body system is done within existing resources, and they have to be very inventive to figure out how to do all the activities that they planned throughout the year. So, let's stop here. We also have another chart, which is in your document, which shows how the simplified reporting procedure has been implemented over the last 2 years. And perhaps we can also put that on the board because like you, we are puzzled by the great number of— by the great decrease in reports received despite efforts of capacity building program. And we also want to brainstorm on, you know, what's the reaction. Last year you adopted the exceptional measures because the meeting time was cut drastically. The working groups, most of them were canceled. A lot of work was moved intercessionally or online. But given what we know and also what uncertainty we have for next year, what is the— what is— I think you also asked the High Commissioner yesterday what should be the short-term plan. You know, it's— I think it's good to have a longer-term plan, which are the proposals that you're currently discussing, but the short-term plan is what, of course, our states and stakeholders are asking from us. So just to show some of the simplified reporting procedure modalities, if we can make that bigger and just go to the—

yeah, can we make it bigger? Yes.

Can we dim the lights on this corner so that we can see? Can we just make it a little bit bigger so that it fits this? Great. And dim the lights. Dim the lights?

Yeah.

Somewhere there?

Because the webcast—

It's fine.

Yeah.

Okay. So here you can see, of course, how the meeting time between different committees varies also according to ratification, that in fact meeting time is not dependent on ratification. It depends on how many reports a committee has received in the past, and this determines the meeting time that the committee needs to go through those reports. So over time you have seen that—

Yes.

Reports received has drastically declined, which means that meeting time has also declined. And on top of that, we have the liquidity situation, which means that you cannot even meet for the actual— for the meeting time that has been assessed. So here, what's interesting is to see— okay, if we just go down a little bit. Yeah, just here. So the simplified reporting procedure, whether it's opt-in or opt-out or default or actually asking member states to join, is different according to committees. And just to recall that chairs have already recommended that the simplified reporting procedure becomes the default. And then what we can see— Just go a little bit up. Between this big bar, which is the— just go up. Yeah, here, stop. Just the purple and the orange one, if we can have those two together. Yeah, so here you have the— it's the number of years required to examine the accumulated backlog of SP reports under the current meeting time, yeah? So it's again another kind of illustrate— I think you need to go up a bit, yeah? Okay, this chart is not very easy to show. Just go up. Okay. So— no, just go up. Just move further. I just want the orange one. Yeah, stop here.

Yeah.

This is the number of— the orange row is the number of years required to examine reports— if all State Parties comply with their treaty obligations. So, it's basically the number of ratifications that's been divided with the actual meeting time. So, if you were to establish a predictable schedule of reviews and then take all those that have ratified and divide them by the actual meeting time, this is the number of years it would take to review those states. So, you can see 18, 22, 19. 19 or 10 years. So again, the chairs decided to establish a predictable schedule of reviews of 8 years, but at the moment this is not possible. And last year we did a simulation of what a predictable schedule of reviews would look like with current meeting time, and that was current as of last year, um, 2024, and it was already— we were already at a 12-year their average periodicity. So now with only 2 sessions per year, the periodicity of course is gone from, yeah, 18 to 22 years. I think the average is 18. And then just to show the last one, the last row, the application, the current application of the simplified reporting Simplified reporting procedure, yeah, the text just at the last row. All the way down, just all the way— yes, just here.

Yeah, okay.

So now, of course, because we are in this situation, the committees have gone back to that decision to utilize the simplified reporting procedure as default. So now we are in this situation where we are in between, meaning that committees have now decided not to fully offer the simplified reporting procedure. For example, CERD only offers it if there is a long overdue report as an incentive, which means that States Parties that actually comply with their reporting obligation feel that they are penalized. CESC has stopped the offer of the simplified reporting procedure because of lack of resources. CCPR is still offering the simplified reporting procedure, but they don't have reports that have been received as a result of least official priority reporting because States do not comply with the 1-year deadline to produce their report, and also in 2024, 2025, only 1 committee reviewed a report in the absence of a— reviewed a state in the absence of a report, which means that the fact that chairs— because to apply the predictable schedule, you need to be able to also review states states even if they don't present reports. But in reality, this was only done once in the 2 years, 2024 and 2025. So it's how it is. CEDAW applies the list of issues prior to reporting, but of course, they have a huge amount of reports that are— have not been received as a result of List of Issues Prior to Reporting. CAD, CAD is probably the only treaty body that is managing to keep up with its simplified reporting procedure. The CRC applies the simplified reporting procedure to a large number of reports, but still has a huge backlog. CMW is also keeping up with the simplified reporting procedure, and CRPD is only applying to periodic and long overdue initial reports.

Thank you.

So you can— when member states— when we interact with member states and they say, okay, we don't know what is the situation at any given time with the Committee in relation to the simplified reporting procedure, or one committee asks us to— or tells us that we are under the simplified reporting procedure, another one tells us that that we have to produce a report. You can see that the— we are not at a stage where there is clarity of what is it that we can do or that treaty bodies can do and what is it that we cannot do. So I think it would be great if, you know, we can also have the input from you on how we should take this— this forward at this stage of time that we are at. And perhaps let's stop here. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Secretariat, for your presentation and update. So now the floor is open for comments and observations on the implementation chart. I give the floor to Nala.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Thank you.

Thank you very much to our colleagues from the Secretariat. These charts are the result of an enormous amount of work, enormous, and they are, you know, we just touched the top. We received them, we start to understand them now with this presentation, we can even relate to them a little bit better. But it seems to me that it would be good if you add to the chart the incidence of COVID because when you look at the years and the drop, it is related to COVID as well, where meeting time were simply— where meeting in person was simply not possible, and it was difficult to organize online dialogue. We did it only for one country in our case.

Thank you.

Then the other thing I wanted to discuss is this issue of simplified reporting procedure, because I thought that many years ago, even before I became a Chair, it was agreed that we will offer it and that State Party can choose to opt out of it, but those who would choose to use it will be the— by default. And I think we— although it is complex in the sense that there is much more work on the shoulder of the Secretariat and the committees. In our case, we used to have a pre-session working group for 5 days every session dedicated only to producing LOI and LOIPR, and that was really a lot of work gone into that. We realize now that we've done our best, as was reflected in the building on the measures we have adopted last year. We moved to do a lot of the work online. But at the same time, when we produce LOI and LOIPR, we are asked to wait for the formal session to have them adopted. So it's meaningless. It's meaningless. Why should the colleagues who have jobs and everything give time online, not remunerated, as we all know, but this is voluntary function, produce the right thing, and then told that you have to wait because the UN Kant has to give a quote. I mean, some of those bureaucratic answer that doesn't tally in my view. Either when we make an effort and do work and produce, it is used and it has impact. Then the other catch-22 that we are in, we're told now that the more you produce, the more we have reports, but we don't have enough staff to add the dialogue. So it is a vicious circle. Can we break it one way or the other? Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Now I give the floor to Mr. Freshary.

Many thanks and happy Tuesday and good morning to all. It's a real pleasure to actually have this kind of conversations and I'm very grateful for the work that you all at the Secretariat have done to prepare this analytical diagnosis of the situation. Just a couple of comments also reflecting what we discussed in the committee so that you are also aware of it. So one is that, you know, in all my years on the committee and in the discussions we have regarding the simplified reporting procedures or the work that we engage with states to make it easier for them to report. I really don't recall any particular obstacle or conceptual, like, difficulty in making it easier for states to submit reports and also for us to prepare the list of issues or the list of issues prior to reporting. There's been some discussions about accessibility. So especially during COVID when we were forced to do the work online, there were all sorts of, you know, glitches or hiccups that happened. Because of language differences, working methods, people who are not really used to working online. There's only so much that you can do online as well. So— and this also reflects a little bit my own personal experience. I teach also courses online, and there's only so much that one can do online. So it's good, but also there are limits with it. There's one specific concern in the committee that I would like to to mention. I think I referred to it the other day, and I think the Chair also has raised it, which is the number of meeting times that we have. So this year, because of everything that happened, we met only once for 2 weeks and 2 days. But the concern is that, you know, for next year, if we keep to one year, then there will be too much of a of a time between the sessions. So, it will be one year, which will lead to, you know, states not really receiving feedback on their reports for a long time. And so, we would— we are advocating that we have two sessions for next year. If it's impossible to increase the number of days, we can live with those days and make— do do as much as possible, but at least we can have two sessions so that we can shorten this, like, time in between sessions and be able to actually produce a little bit more work. And if we have, you know, one or two more extra days, then we can make sure that we do both prepare more list of issues, but also review more reports if they are on the table. But that's kind of like our main—

Okay.

Concern and also the concern that our chair has articulated several times also during the session that we just concluded on Friday. So to sort of increase the number of meeting times for next year.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Is there any other— okay, Mr. Koot, please.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Secretariat. This is, as Madam Hajdar said, tremendous amount of work and very useful for not only looking ahead but also in comparison with other committees. So yes, we are going to make a good use of it, I'm sure. One thing that I have seen in all these tables is that they were mostly— most of the actions that were taken were designed as exceptional measures. So my question at this point now is that, are we trying to improve exceptional measures, or are we trying to normalize them? This is something that we have to discuss because we do not want to normalize measures that are designed to be exceptional. An exception is an exception. We have two— Reasons for reverting to exceptional measures. One is— one was COVID, whose effect we still feel those two years. The second is the financial situation. So neither are within our power to address. So how— my logic puts pressure on me, and I don't know how to address this if the solution is not within our powers. That's one thing that I wanted to say. I mean, everything can be improved. I'm not saying that, you know. But also, the second thing that I have seen is that the general policy failure, the policy failure is defined when the policy fails, a particular policy fails to achieve its intended objectives. And in policy analysis, there is this law which says if a policy fails to deliver its intended consequences, you should not insist on it. So that means you have to change it. Then we have to, instead of again insisting on things like list of issues prior to reporting, etc., etc., which we have seen did not deliver its intended results. Maybe we have to be more creative. We have to find new ways, new approaches. But again, anything that we do —has to be geared towards solving a problem. But the problems that are in front of us are beyond our capacity. I'm talking as treaty bodies as well as the Secretariat, you know. All these external factors— create an environment which puts us in a position that, you know, whatever we do, we can only hope to have a small contribution to any possible solution. So, I know this sounds depressive, but, you know, we have to be realistic. We cannot— we should not assume that by insisting on a concept that was created some time ago for resolving a particular problem, if it doesn't solve that particular problem. That's what I was going to contribute to this debate. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Thank you very much. You have made very important points. I'll give the floor to Madam Saran.

Thank you, Chair, and good morning, dear colleagues. A pleasure to be back, and thank you to the Secretariat for that briefing. At the outset, I would like to say that I share the concerns expressed by my colleagues around the room, all three of them who took the floor, and I thought I would on my own part also elaborate that I joined this committee, my committee, SESC, in 2019, and I know that this whole process of simplified reporting procedure, harmonization, improving our methods of work, et cetera, was already underway in discussions. And we really used a lot of our precious committee time, which we should have used, in fact, for doing state party reviews, pending state party reviews. We used that very precious time and resources, including the staff from the Secretariat, because we were assisted at all times by available staff from the Secretariat. Thank you. If we are told that, you know, funds were approved, budget was approved for meetings, but they could not undertake state party reviews because there was no staff available— the staff was certainly available when we were doing this whole exercise of simplified reporting procedure. So when all the precious resources of the Secretariat and meeting time was used for doing this, we certainly, I can tell you, initially had a lot of misgivings.— but we came around to accepting certain aspects, including list of issues, list of issues prior to reporting, harmonization of our methods of work, etc. And when we came up with the template, we were told that there are no funds to implement this. Why did we waste precious time and resources, both of the Committee and the Secretary General? I'm sorry, I'm not understanding. For undertaking an exercise, I would say, in futility if it cannot be implemented. Was this not anticipated? Was this not seen earlier when we undertook this exercise? And we undertook this exercise over several sessions which we should have used actually for doing our core mandate, and that is of state party reviews. So this question is something that confounds me. and I would like to seek a clarification on that. Secondly, I would like to point out that Elena mentioned that the simplified reporting procedures, my committee, the SESC, decided not to offer it because of lack of resources. I would say we were all set to offer it. We worked very hard to offer it, but we were told— so, I mean, if we had been informed in the beginning that no funding would be available, we would not have gone down that. So there is a factual inaccuracy in the statement when you say that because— If we had been told in the very beginning that there would be no resources, we would not have undertaken that exercise. And we did it much against our initial misgivings. So that is a clarification I would like to seek. Then I also want to know, because there has been this chart that has been displayed showing how certain committees have managed to do something, others have not. I wanted to know what is the criteria and the basis on which the time and the funds are allocated per committee, and if it is again a chicken and egg situation that if you get more reports then, you know, you get more funding, etc., etc. In our case, you know, we have had to— and I'm sure it's true of other committees too— we've had to really compress all our work. From 3 weeks per session, it got reduced to 2 weeks. One week of pre-session working group was cut down completely and we were made to compress it during our precious 3 weeks reduced to 2 weeks' time, which means we would come into this Palais Wilson at 8 in the morning and work till about 8 in the evening, you know, through lunch hours, etc. Because pre-session working group, let me tell you, is not just adopting list of issues, it's a lot of hard work. It's like every pre-session working group does almost a near state party review, because we have to go through the entire literature of state party reviews and information, civil society inputs, etc. And all of it— otherwise you're just doing, again, a rubber stamp job. So if we want to do full justice in keeping with our honesty, our integrity, and our commitment to the work of our core mandate of state party reviews, and then you expect us to compress it all within 2 weeks, We've had to cut short that one day that we got for communications work as well, you know, private meeting. So what I cannot understand is what is the criteria, the basis, and I'm aware that there's a liquidity crisis, there's a budget issue, and so you've had to cut short by, you know, 40%, etc., etc. But I would like to know the criteria, and if the staff is available to us to do all these extraneous issues like simplified reporting procedure, Why is that staff not available to do our core mandate of state party reviews? That would be my question. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Maybe I can give the floor back to Secretary Yap before we move on to the next item.

Let me start, and I'm sure colleagues, Helena and others, will complement. Just on the question of simplified reporting procedure and the procedures as to how they are adopted and issued, We've had different practices across the committees, as was indicated earlier, and there are sort of, I would say, ideal ways to do that when you have pre-sessional discussions, you have in CRC, you've had very important discussions with children in the context of preparation of Löypers, and that has taken— in the past meeting time, and at the same time, you've had procedures such as Committee Against Torture, where you have basically the preparatory work is done prior to the plenary, online, through exchanges. There is no same level of direct engagement and involvement, but it does mean then that the draft is— discussed in a plenary only if there are— and Anna will correct me if I'm wrong— only if there are issues that people want to raise. And the actual adoption actually takes place in the plenary, but it is a very quick adoption. And that has meant that the meeting time requirements for adoption of LOIPRs for CAT have been limited. Thank you. And CAD, as many of you know, was the committee that introduced this procedure first, and it has then been adopted by others. In the current circumstances, where we have the restrictions on both the staffing side and on the meeting time, the sort of the ideal way of doing that has no longer been possible, not on the staff on the meeting time side, and therefore that you as chairs have included that also in your emergency or exceptional measures to do that intercessionally, and of course if you work on it intercessionally, it does not exclude the idea to follow the CAD practice and have it formally adopted in the plenary. The issue of to what extent there is staff available for this or that activity, I mean, that is a challenge that we are facing this year in particular, because as all of you know, we've lost a number of colleagues within the branch, which affects our capacity to produce everything that relates to your mandate. And there's a prioritization to be done. In terms of whether it goes to the support for the dialogues or other mandated activities that in many cases are very taxing on the Secretariat and require a lot of support. One thing that I mentioned yesterday already, that in these circumstances, simplified reporting procedure and the preparation of the list of issues prior to reporting I believe that it has to be— maybe it's an exceptional measure again, but it has to be even further simplified because we simply cannot do it in the— according to the modalities that have been in place. And we've seen that in the Human Rights Committee. Elena mentioned that there's a problem in terms of getting reports in reply to the LOIPRs, but we also have the problem of actually preparing those LOIPRs and having the resources to do that, and I'm sure Wanhee can elaborate on that. So these are the challenges we are facing. At the same time, it is clear that we have member states very much— most of them very much supporting the simplified reporting procedure and saying that this is the way they want to go. We have GA Resolution 68/268 that encourages simplified reporting procedures. Procedure, and in that spirit also the chairs have highlighted its importance and agreed that it should be a default procedure, always with the option for states to opt out. And then just briefly on the issue of meeting time. Meeting time, as was rightly pointed out, it comes from Resolution 68/68, the assessed meeting time. According to the number of reports received and individual communications received, and then 2 weeks for the committees for other mandated activities annually. So that is the basis, that is the assessed meeting time that you see in the Secretary-General's report every 2 years, and that is the starting point. When we, unfortunately, have had to face reductions because of the budgetary and liquidity situation, and we've had that 40% reduction. That has been cut as per committee according to the assessed meeting time. So it's been everywhere where we've been— we've been trying to be as careful as possible that we do not choose— pick and choose who gets how much, but it is 60% of your— of the originally calculated meeting time. And in that respect, one challenge we've had, including for CAT and Human Rights Committee in particular, because they have the highest number of individual communications, the challenge we've had, it's now more acute than before, but it has been there already before, that even the—— if we get the meeting time for individual communications, in that particular area, we do not have the staff resources to fully support the full meeting time. So there we've had to make some sacrifices also because of the lack of human resources. So I'll stop there. I don't know whether Elena wants to add.

Thank you. Thank you, Antti. Just to say that— Thank you. No, just to say that when the GA resolution was adopted, of course, the background to it was that each committee would, through the main sponsor of the resolution at the GA, would seek the GA's support for ad hoc meeting time, additional meeting time, meeting time for working groups. So the fact is that we had— when the GA resolution was adopted, we had several committees who had pre-sessional working groups for adoption of list of issues and several of them which didn't. So this has continued. So in terms of working methods, we can say that some committees had the benefit of those pre-sessional working groups and some committees don't have the benefit of those pre-sessional working groups. And hence, working methods developed. And just for the inter-sessional adoption of list of issues, the SPT discusses and adopts most of its visit reports through inter-sessional procedure. It's true that they also discuss the reports during meeting time, but a lot of that work is done intercessionally, okay, the mandate is different, but there's nothing preventing the committees of doing this work intercessionally except that it's perhaps time over and above the time that treaty body experts expected to allocate to this pro bono work. So—

Yes.

I think that's one issue. The other issue on how do we allocate resources, so the GA resolution comes with a workload target. So for every week of meeting time, a committee is supposed to review 2.5 reports or 23 individual communications. And for that amount of meeting time, you also have the staff support of— 15 weeks of a P3 for state party reviews and 70 weeks of a P3 for individual communications. So this is the basis on which the staffing is allocated to committees and it also changes year on year because a lot of committees think, "I have 11 weeks of meeting," or, "I have 12 weeks of meeting. Why did you inform me that, you know, I only have 10 or I only have 12?" Yes. We have 8 or 9 because the meeting time is assessed, changes according to how many reports a committee receives in the previous 4 years, and this is why we have this variation. And then, as Antti said, we apply the— due to non-availability of resources to organize the meetings, we apply the reduction across all committees and in all areas so that we don't prioritize State Party reviews over individual communications or over other mandated activities. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I will give the floor to Madame Raku.

Thank you, Chair. Just a brief comment from CAD concerning the simplified reporting procedure. So yes, thank you, Antti, for your comments and explanations regarding the practice that exists within our committee. So we were among the pioneers of these procedures, the early adopters of the simplified reporting procedure. I must confess our experience has been very positive. It helped us to focus the dialogue and the exchange of views with the member states in a more focused and more technical and practical— away, and it has definitely— it has contributed to a more substantive exchange with the State Parties. Just to clarify, in CAT, all members have the opportunity to provide their comments, suggestions, inputs before the list of issues prior to reporting is finalized. So the rapporteurs are the ones who bear the, the overall responsibility, and then, um, intersectional. And then members may come up with, with their contribution, and, um, the, the adoption, uh, usually take place during the plenary. So the procedure, at least for CART, we believe that it enhanced the quality of dialogue. And the most important thing that I want to highlight to you is that the value of the simplified reporting procedure, at least in our case, is not just simply to reduce the reporting burden, but also to concentrate on the most important and substantive matters of implementation for our committee. And I see many reasons to— Thank you. Encourage other sister bodies to accept or to engage in this process because I had opportunity to be rapporteur for the same country 2 times. So I can see in practical examples the— How the— this procedure is implemented in practice. So, but again, maybe it's about specificity, particular experience of our committee and— Yes. We have to take into consideration the peculiarities of other cystic bodies, but in our case it worked. And we still continue. Thank you.

Thank you very much for sharing your experience. Mr. Kutt, you have the floor.

Thank you. I have 3 points to raise.

One—

Oh, microphone.

Thank you. Thank you again. 3 points to raise. 2 comments. One is that my initial question of principle did not get an answer. Are we trying to normalize an exceptional measure? And I'm saying we shouldn't. Now, 2 comments. One on the list of issues prior to reporting. It's just— exhausting to talk about this again and again and again for so many years. In this very valuable table that Elena showed us, we have seen different committees applying the principle in different ways. This is a beautiful case of comparative analysis. Comparative policy analysis to see how different applications ended up in producing different results. So, my neighbor tells me that it works beautifully for CAT. We commend it. Very good. But from what I see, for the rest of the committees, it doesn't. In every other reiteration, in every other different application, didn't produce the expected results. And I'm going to insist, you scrap policies that do not work. The list of issues prior to reporting and the so-called simplified reporting procedure First of all, it is not simple, and secondly, it doesn't achieve its goal. So several times you have heard me saying that the procedure that the— that the CERD is using is simpler than the simplified procedure. Allow me to say why and how. We produce concluding observations for States Parties. In those concluding— You know all this. You know all this. In all those— in all these concluding observations, we tell the States Parties what we expect in their next periodic report and when we expect it, right? So, what we expect, when we expect it. So, we assume the next report that will be submitted in the date indicated should answer the issues we raised in that concluding observations. So, that is the basis of the report. So we get the report, but the reality of the situation is that we cannot immediately consider the report. So there are some years, some lag. So in between the submission of the report and the time of consideration, we say if the time lag is too long, we send a a short list of themes to the States Parties saying that, "Okay, these are the issues that came to our attention through civil society or other UN body reports. Please add information about these in your— or be prepared to come in front of the Committee having considered answers to these, right? And then they come eventually. We look at their report. Their initial presentation normally is expected to incorporate the list of teams that we have indicated and then we conduct the dialogue. I mean, can this— can anything be simpler than that? Instead of trying to have pre-session groups to prepare a list of issues and then— I mean, we have a simpler procedure. We have a more logical procedure because it takes into— as the basis, the concluding observation of the State Party the previous time they appeared before the Committee.— and we start— and that whole cycle continues. So it's simple. It's simple. For States Party too, it's simple. They have the report. They have the concluding observations. They know what to do. They know when to do it. So I cannot imagine anything simpler. That's the—

Thank you.

Second comment and last comment, I promise I won't take the floor anymore. The intersectional work. Madam Haidar said it's voluntary work. No, it's not. Voluntary work is by people in their spare times. We don't have spare times. We are employed people. Any time that we spare for the UN work is taken from the time we owe to our employer. That's not voluntary work. That's our employer subsidizing the UN. That's one. Second— It is voluntary work. Well, yes, it is. There are those who— us who do not have that luxury. Not me, I'm retired, but you know, I can do voluntary work. But for people who owe their time to their employer, they may not be given that permission. Plus, we come from all over the world. We have different time zones. I mean, why should somebody wake up at 5 o'clock in the morning and somebody should stay awake at 2 o'clock in the morning to be able to meet in Geneva time? I mean, what do we owe? Okay, we like this work, we are, I mean, good-hearted people and so on and so forth, but I mean, please, there has to be a limit. And we need to be professional about it. Now, everybody is professional around us, the states parties, the Secretariat, etc., etc., and we should be treated as professionals as well. That would be my concluding remark. Thank you, Chair.

Okay, thank you very much. We will have more time to discuss simplified procedure in private meeting next time, so I don't want to discuss that more. I just want to make one comment on the issue that you question whether exceptional measures become normalized. I'm sure that Secretary doesn't want that, but I'm afraid, we're all afraid the exceptions become normal. That's what's happening now, last 2 years and next year. But all these discussions, you know, including shortage of staff, voluntary work during the intercessional period, reduction of meeting times, all fundamental problem goes to the lack of resources, right? It's something we cannot control. So, you know, if you think of the resource, that's why I'm keep emphasizing resources, is is coming from states, but there are 193 member states and even more states, including, you know, non-members participating in treaty bodies. They are all in different positions. As you mentioned, you know, two countries take 42% of regular budgets. We can't blame all the states. We are really in a very dangerous situation. You know, it comes down to that issue. So we need to be very creative, you know, in this situation. We have to collaborate with the office. I'm sure that office is doing their best. Then, you know, I think there's 3 steps. One is within the Resolution 68-68, what can you do the best? Because no guarantee that we'll have a revision of resolution by end of this year. That's the one thing. Then second thing is what can you do to force the states to have a new resolution? That's something office and High Commissioner are trying to work on it. Then we can think of the further strengthening of treaty body, which is the proposal provided by the office. So I think that there are three different things we have to discuss. But what I'm trying to say is that the fundamental issue is in the lack of resources. That's something we cannot control. But within that limit, you know, we will have to, you know, be creative and provide some answers. Okay?

Okay.

Okay. So having said that, I want to move the next item. We now consider documents entitled Exceptional Working Method and NGO.

Is there—

Oh, no, I think she already—

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah, yeah. Exceptional Working Method and NGO Civil Society Participation in Treaty Body Sessions. I will invite Rabo Ferguson to introduce this matter and provide an update. You have the floor.

Thank you, Chair. Good morning. I will be presenting on the report, the NGO report, that looked at the impacts of exceptional measures on NGO and civil society participation. I would like to highlight key elements that came from the data, that the cancellation of pre-session working groups have resulted in a loss of upstream engagement. Two, written submissions have increased, but oral engagement has decreased. And 3, inclusiveness and accessibility has reduced significantly. I would like to also indicate that this note is a live document. It anticipates that there will be additional discussions with NGOs and civil society. I would now move on to— 7 elements that underscore the findings of the report. First is that participation has not really disappeared, but it has fundamentally changed. NGO and civil society engagement continues in volume, particularly through written submissions, but there's a clear shift away from interactive participation. And so the report outlines that participation is now increasingly written, remote, and informal. In summary, what can be ascertained is that it is not so much a loss of participation but more a transformation of how participation is happening. Uh, point 2. The cancellation of pre-session working groups is the most significant structural change. It has reduced early stage influence, especially on a list of issues and list of issues prior to reporting. The core message from here is that pre-sessional working groups disruption have had a system-wide impact on meaningful NGO and civil society engagement. Three, oral and interactive engagement has significantly declined. There's fewer NGO briefings, there's reduced time in session, and there is more informal or off-hours consultations. In summary, direct participation between NGOs and civil societies and the committees is shrinking. 4, written submissions have increased but cannot replace dialogue. Maybe we can go to Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Yeah, Figure 1, yes. As you will see with the purple, is the one that shows written submissions, which have gradually increased over time. And then the pink is the oral participation, which has declined over time. Whereas the green line shows an increase in hybrid participation. This is 2023 and to— 2022. 2025, 2023 as the baseline and 2025 as the last data collection point. To that, we can say, as already indicated, that written submissions have increased, but they cannot replace dialogue. We see that more NGOs and civil society are submitting written inputs, but there's less opportunity to explain, clarify, or influence outcomes, which has led to reduced visibility and engagement. In summary here, we can say that written inputs are increasingly compensating for lost dialogue but cannot essentially substitute it. Five. Participation is becoming less predictable and less structured. Engagement increasingly happens informally, outside official meeting time, and without consistent procedures. In summary here, the system is shifting from structured participation to ad hoc engagement. Six, accessibility and inclusiveness are declining. Key barriers include lack of interpretation, limited accessibility measures, and hybrid formats not fully supported. This mostly affects grassroots NGOs, organizations of persons with disability, and Global South actors. The core message here is that participation is becoming more unequal. Seven, and lastly, reduced participation is partly structural. There are fewer sessions and reviews leading to fewer opportunities to engage. The liquidity crisis has also led to reduced meeting time. The core message here is that decline in participation is also linked to systems constraints. So overall, we can say that in light of the data that is available, there has been an overall shift from meaningful participation to minimum participation, and so the system is increasingly characterized by a situation where participation is still happening, but it is less interactive, less inclusive, less predictable, and less influential. While participation is being maintained at a minimal level, it is not actually being maintained at an optimal quality. And so the takeaway from the report is that exceptional working methods have preserved continuity of participation, but at the cost of quality, accessibility, and effectiveness of NGO and civil society participation. Now, if we were to look forward and if the trend continues, participation risks becoming Geneva-based, written mainly and less representative. And linking to what the chair has said, Mr. Coote has said, to what extent then should this trend continue with exceptional— really be exceptional? And the report speaks to this when it says that further consultations with civil society and NGOs will be needed if the exceptional methods adopt a less temporary nature. And so the— the conclusion to the report really is that without corrective action, the participatory nature of the treaty body system may be weakened. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your intervention. Then the floor is now open for your inputs and observations. Madam— Madam Aida.

I should be sitting before Ulrich as first one, but thank you so much. I mean, this is crucially important because this is one of the raison d'être of our work, is reaching out to civil society to to activists and to CSOs. And I would like also to pause on the point made by Mr. Kutt earlier. Are we normalizing the exceptional? I think this is a very important question we have to continue to ask ourselves. I'm willing to go out of our way for the exceptional phase so that we lead somewhere and survive— the system survives. But I'm not necessarily willing to consider that whatever we have given up on, it becomes the new normal. I think we need to have that also very clear. What I would like to say about what you mentioned on the cancellation of precession working group, this has been tremendously damaging to our interaction as CEDAW because, especially those who adopted simplified reporting procedure, you need more than ever input before you issue your list of issues prior to reporting. When you lose the quality of the interaction, of people in person who used to come, share confidential issues. Let's not forget, we speak about reprisal in 1 or 2 days. These people, when they put things in writing, they put it in a way thinking that they will, you know, reprisal may come. But when they come to you in a confidential setting, they are much more open to speak, and this is important to preserve. So we've lost that. So our list of issues prior to reporting do not really hit the target because we don't have this very important information that CSO can give in confidential setting to be able to lead to the reply of the list of issue. We are instigating with the list of issue prior to reporting the report because the reply will be the report. So if you are asking the very dull question, you'll have the very dull reply. So I also agree that the quality of the LOIPR has suffered and it continues to suffer because we don't have this important information. It's true, we continue to receive confidential reports from UN country teams and they are extremely important, as I said yesterday, but they are not sufficient. And the fact that our pre-session working group had to be cancelled, we had to cope, accept to do online work, And just here to piggyback on what Mr. Koch said, when I said voluntary, it's that when we run for this function, we knew we were going to give of our time, our passion, our everything on the top of working time for our respective work. And I may be in a position that is easier because I'm like him, I retired. I don't suffer like professors of university who have to reschedule. Et cetera, but I think the voluntary is to accept to serve already on this committee because you are giving a lot of your personal time, of your personal energy, no matter what. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Is there any other chairs? Okay, if not, do you have any comments? Please, no? Okay, then we will wrap up the public session. Is any— okay, then we will have a short break and we'll move to the private session of the meeting. Thank you very much.