Visit reports

What are the visits to States parties?

Article 33 of the Convention stipulates that if the Committee receives information indicating that a State Party is seriously violating the provisions of the Convention, it may, after consultation with the State Party concerned, request one or more of its members to undertake a visit and report back to it without delay.

How are country visits organized and carried out?

The Committee shall notify the State Party concerned, in writing, of its intention to organize a visit.

Once the State Party has agreed to that visit, the Committee and the State Party shall work together to define its modalities and agenda. The State Party shall then support the Committee to allow for the successful completion of all the planned activities.

As for now, country visits are carried out for around 10 to 15 days. The delegation is in principle conformed of three members of the Committee, together with two members of the Committee’s Secretariat, and interpreters in case they are necessary. The duration of the visit and size of the delegation may vary depending on the local circumstances of the country (extent of the territory, security issues, costs of displacements, need for interpreters, etc.).

What happens after a visit is carried out?

Following the visit, the Delegation in charge presents a report to the Plenary that will consider, discuss and adopt it. The Committee then communicates its report to the State party concerned, which has four months to provide observations on the report. Such observations are made public on CED webpage.

All parties then enter in the phase of the implementation of the recommendations. In that context, the State party is in charge of taking measures to implement the recommendations and to provide the Committee with information in that regard. On its side, the Committee remains available to provide assistance and support to all interested actors, and it carries out a follow-up to the measures taken by the State party. To this end, the Committee analyses the information provided by the State party and other actors, and adopts recommendations as to the measures that State authorities should adopt (see article 29(4) of the Convention). The procedure remains open as long as the Committee considers it necessary.

Visit reports

• Visits and public reports
• Statement of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances upon the conclusion of its visit to Iraq