PART 2: Procedures of the Human Rights Commitee and the Committee against Torture Second, it has a follow-up procedure for the implementation of its views on complaints submitted under the Optional Protocol. Each of these follow-up procedures is overseen by a Special Rapporteur, appointed by the Human Rights Council. a) Follow-up on Concluding Observations Concluding Observations are issued at the conclusion of the reporting process, following the consideration of a State party’s periodic report. The HRC generally requests the relevant State party to give priority to particular “concerns and recommendations”,504 specified at the end of its Concluding Observations, which provide the starting point for the “follow-up” procedure in relation to those Concluding Observations. In 2002, the HRC appointed a Special Rapporteur on Follow-Up to Concluding Observations (referred to under this heading as Special Rapporteur) to oversee this procedure.505 His or her role is to “establish, maintain or restore dialogue with the State party”.506 The Committee has stressed the importance of this dialogue-facilitating role, describing the mechanism as a means “by which the dialogue initiated with the examination of a report can be continued”.507 This follow-up procedure is therefore a central part of the State reporting process. In a recent attempt to reform the follow-up mechanism and improve its effectiveness, the Special Rapporteur proposed that the “priority issues” identified by the HRC be kept to a maximum of three of the most urgent recommendations.508 Once these issues have been identified, the State party has a year in which to report back to the HRC with information indicating the measures taken to address and improve on its performance in the priority areas.509 The information provided by the State in its response is labelled as “follow-up information” and is made publicly available on the treaty bodies database (at: http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/SitePages/ Home.aspx) and in the HRC’s Annual Reports. The role of the Special Rapporteur is then to assess the information provided by the State, taking all other information into account (including that from other special procedures, NGOs and NHRIs), and report back to the HRC in the form 504 HRC, Rules of Procedure, Rule 71(5). 505 Report of the Human Rights Committee, (2002) UN Doc. A/57/40 (Vol. I), para. 54 and Annex III A, paras. 3-5. 506 HRC, General Comment No. 30, para. 5. 507 HRC, Report of the Human Rights Committee, (2013) UN Doc. A/68/40 (Vol. I), para. 265, p. 218. 508 See Press Release, “Committee discusses individual communications, case management of individual communications and follow-up to concluding observations”, 22 July 2013, para. 4, news and media, available at: www.unog.ch. 509 See http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/Pages/FollowUpProcedure.aspx. 153