A/HRC/12/43 page 16 management unit responsible for the administrative and logistic organization of the consultations and a team of 22 national field assistants, who will conduct the individual interviews and group meetings that comprise the consultations. The organization of the national consultations is supported by a project implemented under the PBF that is administered by UNDP. 60. While progress on the fulfilment of the Government’s commitments to establishing transitional justice mechanisms has been slow, the national consultations on the prospective mechanisms began in July 2009. The United Nations has worked through the TSC to ensure the participation of women’s groups and civil society organizations in the consultations and the inclusion of a gender-sensitive perspective in the consultations. 61. National and international civil society organizations have created a network to monitor the national consultations and established, with the TSC, the modalities for its activities. They will complement the efforts of the TSC to ensure that the objectives of the consultations are known and understood, to monitor for any attempts to distort the outcome, and in due course to help make known the outcome of the consultations. The United Nations is also making efforts towards the same ends by conducting awareness-raising programmes for civil society, the media, and select professional groups, in keeping with the encouragement of the Security Council in a press statement “… to accelerate wider consultations on the establishment of transitional justice mechanisms”.16 C. Interaction with the international human rights mechanisms 62. On all of the issues raised in the present report, Burundi could benefit from the objective expert advice of the international human rights mechanisms. Burundi’s record of interaction with these mechanisms has been mixed. It has engaged little with the special procedures of the Human Rights Council: of the 13 communications that were sent in the past three years, the Government has replied to none. So far only two thematic mechanisms have visited the country: the independent expert on the question of human rights and extreme poverty in 1999 and the Representative of the Secretary-General on human rights of internally displaced persons in 2000. 63. Burundi has generally cooperated with the independent expert on the situation of human rights in Burundi. It is recalled that the Human Rights Council, in its resolution 9/19, decided that the mandate of the independent expert would be extended until an independent national human rights commission had been established, and invited the independent expert to report on his activities to the Human Rights Council at the session following the establishment of the commission. 64. Burundi has recently made efforts to submit the outstanding reports due under the international human rights treaties to which it is a party. Since 2006, it has submitted the reports due to the Committee against Torture, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, and the Committee on the Rights of the Child. It has also submitted its report under the Universal Periodic Review procedure of the Human Rights Council, which was examined in December 2008. However, it is over 10 years late in submitting the reports due to 16 SC/9676 AFR/1858, 9 June 2009.