A/HRC/13/43 22. The majority of speakers welcomed the presence of experts at the working group and their written contributions. Many expressed their interest in hearing the views of experts and other participants regarding key issues, such as: the question of the legal capacity of children; representation of children under the communications procedure and the need to obtain their consent; how to avoid politically motivated complaints; the need to take into consideration cultural particularities; how to ensure that communications were filed in the best interest of the children concerned; the exercise of the child’s right to be heard under the procedure; the exhaustion of domestic remedies; the need to strengthen national mechanisms vis-à-vis an international one; overlapping with existing communications procedures under other human rights treaties; duration of proceedings, given the special status of children; scope of the optional protocol; implications of the procedure for the workload of the Committee; possibility of submitting collective complaints; the inclusion in the optional protocol of an inquiry procedure; and the resource constraints affecting the treaty body system. 23. Several delegations and participants expressed the wish that the working group would be able to recommend that the Council provide it with a mandate to begin the elaboration of an optional protocol and that the current mandate of the working group could thus be reinforced. A few delegations indicated that they had an open view in that respect and that they would listen to the discussion with a view to forming a position. In general, all speakers expressed their willingness to work in an open and constructive manner. 24. One delegation referred to the Declaration adopted on 24 November 2009 at a Conference held in Cairo to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Convention and at which most member States of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) as well as international organizations, national human rights institutions, NGOs and children from OIC countries participated. The Declaration welcomed the expressions of support from numerous OIC member States to strengthen the mandate of the working group to proceed with the drafting of a new optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child to provide a communications procedure. 25. At the end of the general debate the Chairperson noted the high number of delegations and participants that had taken the floor, which showed the great interest that the working group had raised. He stated that a communications procedure in the framework of the Convention was long overdue and there was a need to explore the reasons for it. IV. Reasons and timing to elaborate a communications procedure under the Convention on the Rights of the Child 26. The topic on reasons and timing to elaborate a communications procedure was introduced by Yanghee Lee, Chairperson of the Committee. A written submission on the subject was also provided by Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, Commissioner and Rapporteur on the rights of the child of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and former Independent Expert appointed to lead the United Nations Secretary-General’s Study on Violence against Children. Ms. Lee recalled that the idea of a communications procedure was debated in the late 1980s, during the negotiation process of the Convention, and brought back at the commemorative celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Convention in 1999. However, the proposal did not make progress because at that time the international community was more focused on the definition of children’s rights than on procedural matters. 27. Ms. Lee indicated that in the past year and a half the Committee had considered the pros and cons of a communications procedure and come to the conclusion that such procedure was not only feasible and possible but also necessary, as it would contribute GE.10-10385 7