A/HRC/23/18 • The Committee on the Rights of the Child and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child • The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance • The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children • The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Inter-American Commission for the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities and the Council of Europe Committee of Experts on the Rights of People with Disabilities 18. Furthermore, treaty bodies take the recommendations of regional human rights mechanisms into consideration in their review of implementation by Member States. The secretariats of the treaty bodies also liaise with regional human rights mechanisms regarding individual complaints in order to ensure that the same complaints are not dealt with at the same time by different mechanisms and to safeguard jurisprudential coherence. 19. In June 2012, OHCHR organized a dialogue between the chairpersons of United Nations human rights treaty bodies and African human rights mechanisms, in Addis Ababa. At the meeting, participants highlighted the need to recognize the complementarity of these mechanisms, including the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States and the East African Court of Justice. Participants in the dialogue adopted a set of recommendations aimed at enhancing cooperation. 8 20. With regard to the reporting procedure, an exchange of information well in advance of treaty body sessions was recommended, as were systematic exchanges between country focal points and country rapporteurs of both systems, including sharing the respective country-based concluding observations and status of implementation; cross-referencing of each other’s recommendations; and mutual follow-up on the implementation of countrybased recommendations. On individual communications, regular contacts at the level of secretariat were recommended in order to ensure the exchange of information on issues of procedure, jurisprudence and methods of work. It was also recommended that the respective jurisprudence be taken into consideration and referenced. 21. It was suggested that many of the challenges that the United Nations treaty bodies face might be common to regional mechanisms, including difficulties of States in meeting reporting obligations, late reporting, non-reporting and report backlogs. Therefore, the proposals made by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights with regard to the treaty bodies strengthening process 9 may benefit the cooperation between them and regional human rights mechanisms. 22. The High Commissioner proposed a system that would establish a single comprehensive reporting calendar, based on a periodic five-year cycle. Within that fiveyear period, a maximum of two reports per year would be due from a State that is a party to all treaties.10 This would be beneficial to regional human rights mechanisms because they would be able to keep track of international human rights reporting obligations of States: for example, they would be able to track when specific States were due to submit thematic 8 9 10 See A/67/222, annex II. A/66/860. Ibid., sect. 4.1. 7