Annex 1 One of the main functions of the Committees is to consider state reports. State reporting is a mechanism to monitor the implementation of human rights by the states parties. When a country ratifies one of the treaties, it assumes a legal obligation to submit regular reports to the monitoring Committee on how the rights in this particular treaty are being implemented in the country. It is the responsibility of the government to prepare the state reports but the reports should be the result of an inclusive process involving civil society and the NHRI. In addition, the Committees encourage civil society and NHRIs to provide additional information. Reports from other institutions than the government of the state in question are commonly referred to as shadow reports. Furthermore, information is gathered from public sources, other United Nations agencies and other international organizations. The actual examination of a state party takes place at a public meeting of the Committee in question. Here the government presents its report and then submits to questioning by the Committee members. Several Committees encourage the NHRI of the state party to make its own presentation. Civil society may give information at informal meetings between the formal sessions. Based on this dialogue with government and the other information available, the Committee at a private session discusses and adopts its concluding observations, containing its concerns and recommendations. The concluding observations are made publicly available online. Ideally, the relationship between the Committees and NHRIs should be one of mutual benefit. NHRIs help bring national human rights concerns to the knowledge of the Committees, and the NHRIs can then use the pronouncements by the Committees in their national work. Given the Committees’ legal mandate to help assure adherence to the various treaties and monitor their implementation, the Committees’ pronouncements, in whatever way they are made, have considerable legal standing even though they are not strictly speaking legally binding. Consequently, using the concluding observations and other statements of the Committees only strengthens the hand of NHRIs. In addition to their role in state reporting, the Committees issue general comments or general recommendations. Whereas some of these general comments deal with formal matters, for example related to state reporting, most of them provide interpretation and other assistance to states on how to implement the treaty in question. An example of this is General Recommendation No. 24 of the Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women from 1999 on women and health. Six of the treaty bodies (Human Rights Committee, Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Committee against Torture, Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and Committee on Enforced Disappearances3) can consider individual complaints if the country in question has either ratified an optional protocol or made a specific declaration. The purpose of this Annex is to provide an overview of the pronouncements on matters relating to reproductive rights made by the treaty bodies. With respect to the concluding observations, the analysis covers all the treaty bodies in the period 2005-2012.4 3 CMW will also get this function once the necessary numbers of declarations have been made 4 Including June 2012 119