How to produce a quality LOIPR report with minimum use of human resources: • Provide a short context to the torture situation in the country so Committee members understand what the general conditions are. • Primarily focus on the issues you know well so you do not need to conduct new research. There is no requirement to produce reports that cover all relevant issues. • Go through previous Concluding Observations issued by Committee in relation to your country. If the issues addressed therein are still relevant, you should make sure to comment on what has been done to implement these. • When addressing specific issues, you should provide some detail but avoid writing several pages on one issue. Instead reference to existing reports on those issues if these exist. • Use all the non-confidential statistical information you have available to support your arguments. Statistical information is very useful to the Committee to get a more evidence-based overview of the domestic situation. Where possible, this should be linked to indicators for measuring change. • Explicitly propose particular issues where you think CAT should ask questions. This can either be general — on legislation, prison conditions, etc. — or on very specific issues, such as lack of available statistical data, status of concrete unresolved cases or the situation in a specific detention facility. It is important not to propose the wording of the question but only to request questions on certain issues. Deciding a format of the text is a very individual choice. However, the IRCT finds that it can be useful to split each focus area into four sub-categories: 1. General context of the issue 2. Previous Concluding Observations on the issue and what the Government has done to implement them 3. Specific problems and possible solutions 4. Proposed areas for questions with special interests can help promote the inclusion of questions within their interest areas. Lastly, the Committee secretariat needs to have sufficient information to support the preparation of relevant quality questions. The main method for influencing the contents of a LOIPR is by submitting a written report to the Committee approximately two months in advance of the session. In addition, one can seek to provide informal oral briefings to Committee members who may have questions for clarification. When preparing written and oral information, it is important to keep in mind the following considerations: 1. Country rapporteurs can be expected to have a certain degree of background understanding of the situation in your country since they are likely to do their own research in advance. However, they have very limited time available to prepare the individual LOIPRs. It might therefore be relevant to include some very specific and targeted analysis and proposed questions in your Engaging with State reviews in the UN Committee against Torture: A practical guide 15