PART 2: Procedures of the Human Rights Commitee and the Committee against Torture – The Committee and representatives from the State party have a constructive dialogue over the contents of the report in the plenary session at which the State party is examined. – The Committee adopts Concluding Observations on the report and the dialogue. – The Concluding Observations, and particularly any priority areas of concern noted in those Observations, are followed up by the relevant Committee. The State party provides follow-up information on the Principal Subjects of Concern and Recommendations within one year of the issuance of the Concluding Observations. NGOs are also encouraged to send submissions regarding the follow-up. – If necessary, there is ongoing follow-up dialogue between the Committee and the State party. – A list of issues prior to reporting (LoIPR) is transmitted to the State party prior to the submission of the respective periodic report (see Section below). – State party submits its next report (reply to the LoIPR) as requested by the Committee, and the process begins again. Exceptionally, a Committee will request an emergency report, when it believes that a human rights crisis of some form is under way in a relevant State.371 This was recently the case at the CAT Committee with Syria. However, the State failed to submit the requested special report, and therefore was examined in the absence of a report.372 A Committee may also call for an earlier report as part of the process of following up the Concluding Observations. b) Reform of the Reporting System The reporting system of both the CAT Committee and the HRC has been the subject of much criticism in the past decade, due to its unwieldy nature. A significant issue was the fact that, even with the high number of late reports, there was often a considerable time gap between the submission of a report and its examination. The Committees’ part time nature does not allow them sufficient time to address reports in a timely manner. Often States would be requested to submit updated information prior to the dialogue, due to the time gap between submission and dialogue. 371 See CAT, Article 19(1); see also Joseph S., “New Procedures concerning the Human Rights Committee’s Examination of State Reports”, (1995) 13, Netherlands Quarterly on Human Rights, p. 5, pp. 13–23. 372 Concluding Observations on the Syrian Arab Republic in the absence of a report, (2012) UN Doc. CAT/C/SYR/CO/1/Add.2. 125

Select target paragraph3

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