The Reporting Procedure Group Activity 4.2.2 4 Hand-out Guiding questions for work in groups Instructions: You will be discussing within your group in a staggered manner the five batches of guiding questions contained in this hand-out within your group. These questions aim at supporting the preparation of an outline of the report of the State party to a Treaty Body. The facilitator will indicate to you the allocated time per batch of questions. You should write down your group agreements in flipcharts as at the end there will be a debriefing in plenary. Guiding questions: 1. Planning and organizing (10 minutes) • Who within the government is best placed to lead the preparations of this particular State party report? Which ministries and government agencies should be involved? What would be the responsibilities of the lead Ministry and others involved in this exercise? 2. Identifying the key issues to be reported on (15 minutes) • What international, regional and national sources of information might assist in identifying those issues? • What would be the most relevant issues to include in the report with respect to the treaty provision assigned to the group? 3. Gathering information and collection of data: what information and data are needed to draft the report? (25 minutes) • What measures or actions are in place to implement the treaty provision assigned to them, using the questions below as a guide: –– How is the right set out in the treaty provision assigned to the group protected at national level (i.e. legislative framework, including remedies for violations of rights)? –– What are the most relevant policies, programmes, strategies, etc. in place to implement this right? –– How do these laws, policies, programmes and strategies specifically address the issues previously identified by the group? • For periodic reports: do the final concluding observations addressed to the State party contain a recommendation relating to the treaty provision assigned to the group? If so, have any specific measures been adopted to implement such a recommendation? • Has the State party reported to other human rights mechanisms how it has been implementing measures related to the treaty provision assigned to the group? How would this information be useful for the current report? • What type of information and data aimed at assessing the impact of the actual enjoyment of the rights contained in the treaty – in particular the treaty provision assigned to the group – is available (e.g., monitoring and evaluation reports of policies and programmes, statistical data, etc.)? Is there a mechanism for monitoring progress in implementation? 47