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for maintaining focus on specific human rights, the reform proposal did not gain

enough support.

3.2 Treaty Body Strengthening

Based on experience and bearing in mind the need to improve the system, the

subsequent High Commissioner did not promote a ‘reform’ but in 2009 initiated

a wide range of consultations that she called a ‘strengthening’. After some twenty

negotiations with various stakeholders, in June 2012 she issued a report named

Strengthening of the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Body System

in which she

presented her proposals that were based on the more than two-year-long consultations

and were therefore regarded as generally acceptable.

The principle recommendation of the report was to introduce a ‘comprehensive

reporting calendar’ to achieve higher cooperation by states parties in submitting reports

and taking part in the review. Nowadays the schedule for the review of a state report is

set after the submittal of the report. This means that, if a state does not cooperate, the

review is postponed, often for many years. To avoid this, a fixed comprehensive

reporting calendar based on a 100% rate of compliance should be introduced,

according to which all states parties would know well in advance when the state will be

reviewed, and it would be reviewed even in the absence of a report. The calendar would

be based on a five-year cycle, which means that the states parties would have to submit

for different treaty bodies a maximum of two reports per year.

Among other proposals there is a recommendation to use a ‘simplified reporting

procedure’. This means that prior to the elaboration of the report the treaty body

informs the state which issues it will concentrate on, and the replies of the state

constitute a state report. By implementing this procedure, which is already being

used by the Human Rights Committee,

the report would be more focused and the

whole review time- and cost-saving.

The report also contained a number of other recommendations, from which it is

appropriate at least to mention the following – a strict adherence to page limitations,

reducing translations of summary records, more focused treaty body concluding

observations, creation of a joint treaty body working group on communications,

supporting capacity-building activities relating to reporting, introducing webcasting

and videoconferencing to enhance the visibility and accessibility of treaty bodies at

the country level, establishment of a treaty body jurisprudence database on individual

cases and strengthening of an implementation by follow-up procedures in all treaty

bodies.

Report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights A/66/860 of June 2012.

Ibid

., p. 37-46.

This procedure has been used in the Human Rights Committee under the name

List of Issues Prior to

Reporting

(LOIPR).

For analysis of the particular recommendations contained in the report, see Egan, Suzanne. Strengthening

the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Body System.

Human Rights Law Review

(vol. 13, no. 2, 2013),

p. 209-243.