Consideration of the complaint The committees consider each case in closed session. Although the rules of procedure of some committees provide for partly oral proceedings,13 the practice has been to consider complaints only on the basis of the written information supplied by the complainant and the State party. Accordingly, it has not been the practice to receive oral submissions from the parties or audio or audiovisual evidence. Nor do the committees go beyond the information provided by the parties to seek independent verification of the facts. As a general rule and in order to speed up the procedure, the committees examine the admissibility and the merits of a complaint at the same time. The general procedure set out above will then apply, that is, once a communication has been received and registered, it is transmitted to the State party concerned to give it an opportunity to present observations. The complainant is then offered an opportunity to comment on the State’s observations, following which the case is normally ready for the committee’s examination of the admissibility and the merits. However, there are situations in which a committee decides to examine the admissibility first. In this event the State will be requested to make submissions on the merits only if the committee declares that the complaint is admissible. The complainant will in any event have an opportunity to comment on the State party’s submissions on the merits. The decision adopted by a committee is transmitted to the complainant and the State party simultaneously. One or more of its members may append a separate opinion to the decision if they come to a different conclusion from the majority or perhaps reach the same conclusion but for different reasons. Final decisions on the merits (generally called views) or inadmissibility are posted in full on the OHCHR website as part of the committees’ jurisprudence. What happens once a committee has decided a case? It should be noted at the outset that there is no appeal against the committees’ decisions and that, as a rule, their decisions are final. What happens to a case subsequently depends on the nature of the decision taken. If a committee decides that the facts before it disclose a violation by the State party of the complainant’s rights under the treaty, it will invite the State party to supply information on the steps it has taken to give effect to its findings and recommendations. If a committee decides that there has been no violation of the treaty or that the complaint is inadmissible, the case is closed. See the descriptions below of the procedures of the Committee against Torture, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the Committee on the Rights of the Child. 13 10