A/HRC/31/74 process and that some of its outcomes had addressed some problems associated with reporting to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Focus should be placed on improving implementation of existing obligations and standards, rather than creating new procedural obligations. He recalled the existing individual communications procedure, under article 14 of the Convention. He said that several special procedure mandate holders working on the issues were already undertaking country visits, such as the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, the Independent Expert on minority issues and the activities planned as part of the International Decade for People of African Descent. His delegation was not convinced that country visits would be a good way to use the Ad Hoc Committee’s time, expertise and resources. Regarding national mechanisms, he stated that countries were already free to set them up. With regard to substantive gaps, an additional optional protocol could damage the core treaty by diluting the focus of Member States, overburdening the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination with new issues and undermining its current scope by implying that some issues are not addressed by it. He recalled the discussions on forms of complementary standards that were not binding, such as best-practice documents and additional guidelines in the area, which could be valuable and useful in the important fight against racism. He stated that the Ad Hoc Committee could move forward to develop such non-binding documents. 31. The representative of the European Union made some preliminary observations and recalled that the presentations by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination confirmed that the substantive provisions of the Convention were sufficient to cover contemporary issues. The European Union stressed the importance of optimizing the existing monitoring procedures of the Committee, namely, through the urgent action procedure and full reporting obligations. A new procedure held the risk of duplication and overlap between the Human Rights Council mechanisms and the work of OHCHR. I. Questionnaire conducted pursuant to paragraph 4 of Human Rights Council resolution 21/30 32. At the 13th meeting, on 22 July, the Chair-Rapporteur referred to two documents distributed to delegations at several previous sessions of the Ad Hoc Committee and by email to regional coordinators prior to the seventh session. The documents were entitled “Resumed third session of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Elaboration of Complementary Standards — list of topics discussed in the second session” and “Fifth session of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Elaboration of Complementary Standards — list of topics contained in A/HRC/18/36: report of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Elaboration of Complementary Standards on its third session”. 33. The documents were distributed once again at the 13th meeting, at which the ChairRapporteur reiterated the list of topics discussed as items on the programme of work at the previous sessions, indicating that the topic of xenophobia and the topic of racism and sport had been discussed at three sessions, and national mechanisms and procedural gaps with regard to the Convention had been considered at four sessions. In addition to the list, he recalled that, during the fifth session, the Committee had decided that it was important to discuss prevention/awareness-raising and affirmative action/special measures, and those topics had also been discussed at the sixth session as part of its programme of work. He indicated that the Committee should make use of the lists in consideration of topics for future sessions and in determining how to move forward with its work. The discussions at the 13th meeting took place on the basis of the documents. 10