52 Treaty bodies have been playing a role in reducing paper and becoming papersmart. The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Committee on Migrant Workers, the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and the Committee on Enforced Disappearances are all paper-smart to some degree. For example, neither the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities nor the Committee on Enforced Disappearances has any distribution of hard copies before the session. Instead, their members all access documents through personal computers. In line with the Secretary-General’s policy, the provision of hard copies will be phased out. D. Financial matters Treaty body members do not receive a salary for their work. Some treaties indicate that States parties or the United Nations are responsible for the expenses incurred by treaty bodies or their members during the session or in implementing the treaty body’s mandate. Others require the General Assembly to approve emoluments for treaty body members.27 In practice, this translates into the United Nations paying the travel costs of members as well as a daily subsistence allowance (DSA) to cover accommodation and other costs, such as board, local transport, communications, hospitality, etc., when members travel to Geneva or elsewhere for sessions or other official tasks, for instance country visits, or attend mandated meetings, such as panels of the General Assembly. Similarly, as the annual meeting of Chairpersons and the presentation of annual reports to the General Assembly in New York are official meetings, the United Nations covers travel costs and DSA for the Chairs. For treaty body sessions and official visits, members receive a DSA at 140 per cent of the applicable rate for the place of the official mission. The amount is established by the International Civil Service Commission. DSA is linked to attendance at sessions. Consequently, members sign an attendance register daily. If a treaty body member does not attend a session, or part of a session, the daily allowance for those days is deducted. DSA is paid for weekends during the session if the member is present at the last meeting of the week and the first meeting of the following week. All members now receive their DSA paid directly into their bank accounts. If members have provided their banking details in advance, they should receive it on the first day of the meeting. The note on administrative arrangements for experts, set out in annex II below, provides more detail on DSA. When a treaty body member is invited to another United Nations meeting that is not part of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, art. 8 (6); International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 35; Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, art. 17  (8); Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, art. 17 (7); Convention on the Rights of the Child, art. 43 (12); International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, art. 72 (8); Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, art. 25 (1); Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, art. 34 (12); and International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, art. 26 (8). 27 

Select target paragraph3

Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents