The Reporting Procedure 4 LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of the session participants will be able to: ¡¡ appraise the process of preparing a State party report to a Treaty Body; ¡¡ develop an outline of a State party’s report to a Treaty Body. SESSION PREPARATIONS ¡¡ This session has been designed to offer participants a methodology for developing an outline of a State party report under the standard reporting procedure. During the session sequence guidance is provided on how one can adapt it for the preparation of initial or periodic reports. ¡¡ For sub-regional or regional training events, it is suggested that one assumes that the group is preparing an initial report. Specific guidance is provided in the session sequence, where relevant. ¡¡ This session should be preceded by a session or sessions devoted to explaining the key provisions and general obligations of a particular core international human rights treaty (see Session 1.4). Therefore it is assumed that the treaty has already been selected, and consequently also the Treaty Body which will be the focus of this practical session. ¡¡ Intense preparations and clear guidance from the facilitator are required for this session in order for it to run smoothly. Therefore in advance of the course you are encouraged to: üü familiarize yourself with the treaty-specific reporting status of the country or countries (if subregional or regional training), and with the relevant treaty and its accompanying reporting guidelines; üü check whether the Treaty Body has adopted a follow-up procedure. If so, also check the status of the follow-up report of the country or countries (if sub-regional or regional training); üü obtain a copy of the latest Treaty Body concluding observations issued to the State party; üü check whether the Treaty Body has adopted a general comment or recommendation on the selected provisions. If so, familiarize yourself with their content so that you can provide better guidance to participants; üü divide participants into five working groups. Therefore, pre-select five provisions of the treaty as you will be assigning one treaty provision per group. Make sure to find a balance in your selection between the key or general provisions and provisions covering substantive areas which are most relevant to the context of the training (e.g., while a key provision may be the prohibition of discrimination, a relevant substantive area covered by other provisions of the treaty may be education). Assign one provision per group; üü pre-select for each treaty provision a badly drafted paragraph from a State party report (anonymized); üü prepare one set of materials per working group containing the following: the treaty provision assigned per group with a badly drafted paragraph from a State party report; the text of the treaty and its reporting guidelines; the last concluding observations issued to the State party (except for initial reports); and the hand-out contained at the end of this note for the facilitator; üü familiarize yourself with the session sequence. 43