If the Government has provided responses to allegations presented to it during meetings or through correspondence, the commission/mission should decide how best to reflect these in the report. Usually the responses are integrated into the different sections of the report to which they pertain. In some instances, as mentioned above, written correspondence from the State concerned has been annexed to the report. Most United Nations reports have a limit of 10,700 words, a rule adopted for budgetary considerations and to ensure that United Nations translators have a manageable workload. However, it is often very challenging to present the findings, conclusions and recommendations of investigations over many months in so few words. Commissions/ missions have recently adopted the practice of attaching annexes to their report to amplify or substantiate the contents. For example, the main report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (A/HRC/22/59) consisted of 26 pages and its 16 annexes had 105 pages. While this enables the commission’s/mission’s findings to be more comprehensively reported, in such cases only the main report will usually be translated into the other United Nations languages. Some commissions/missions have arranged for unofficial translations of their report into the main language of the country concerned (for example, Arabic or Tetum) for distribution within the country at the time of its release or at a later stage, a practice that is strongly encouraged to allow for greater dissemination of these findings and assessment among the people who are most directly concerned. 2. RELEASE OF THE REPORT Reports of commissions/missions should generally be public. The public nature of these reports is important for them to contribute to the historical recording of events, strengthen the calls for accountability and promote implementation of the recommendations. As stated above, the report is usually published a week to two months before its formal consideration by the mandating body. Practice related to sharing advance copies of the report with the parties concerned has also varied. Commissions/missions have often provided the State concerned with a copy a few days prior to its release. This is to allow it to prepare for the release and subsequent discussions during the report’s presentation. In other cases, advance copies have not been shared with the State concerned, especially if it has not cooperated or owing to very tight deadlines for the finalization of the inquiry and the report. In a few instances, unedited reports have been transmitted to the State and other parties concerned (e.g., armed opposition groups) with a request for comments within a specific 92 COMMISSIONS OF INQUIRY AND FACT-FINDING MISSIONS ON INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMANITARIAN LAW