A/67/44 P. Decision of the Committee to request approval from the General Assembly for additional meeting time in 2013 and 2014 23. In its resolution 65/204 of 21 December 2010, the General Assembly authorized the Committee to meet for an additional week per session as a temporary measure, with effect from May 2011 until the end of November 2012, further to the Committee’s request for appropriate financial support to this effect, adopted at its forty-fourth session.2 24. This additional meeting time, granted for 2011 and 2012, has allowed the Committee to reduce its backlog of pending reports, to consider additional individual communications and to proceed with its optional reporting procedure, thus to improve its efficiency and methods of work. 25. Pursuant to rule 26 of its rules of procedure, with the acknowledgement of the programme budget implications arising from its decision (see annex IX to the present report), the Committee, at its forty-eighth session, decided to request the General Assembly to provide appropriate financial support to enable it to continue to meet for an additional week per each session in 2013 and 2014, i.e. one additional week of sessional meetings in May and in November 2013 and in May and November 2014, for a total of four weeks, bringing its sessions to four weeks each (see annex X to the present report). 26. If granted, this additional meeting time would allow the Committee to continue to consider two additional reports per session, eight for the biennium (2013–2014), keeping to a minimum the number of reports pending consideration. 27. It would also permit the Committee to continue to consider, at a minimum, five additional individual complaints per session, 20 for the biennium (2013–2014), reducing the backlog of 115 individual complaints pending before the Committee. 28. Finally, the additional meeting time would further allow the Committee to continue its optional reporting procedure, enabling it to adopt an average of 10 additional lists of issues per session, 40 for the biennium (2013–2014), thus further assisting States parties in their reporting obligations. 29. At its forty-seventh and forty-eighth sessions, the Committee continued to discuss measures to improve the effectiveness of its working methods and costs in order to better manage its workloads and programmes of work. Along these lines, it decided, inter alia, that it will continue its evaluation of the optional reporting procedure (see chap. II, sect. C). 2 6 Ibid., annex IX. GE.12-44492