A/HRC/WG.7/2/2 Convention on the Rights of the Child needed to take account of the special status and rights of children and be “child-friendly”. Article 3 (1) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child had been identified by the Committee on the Rights of the Child as a principle (the best interest principle) of cross-cutting relevance to the whole Convention. Article 10 (5) of the present draft requires the Committee to “have regard” to article 1 (2) of the present draft in developing and publishing rules of procedure regarding the communications procedure. Article 2 Individual communications 5. Similar provisions arise with slight variations in the four optional protocols and the Convention’s provisions. The provisions of the Optional Protocols to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and also the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination recognize that individuals and groups of individuals may submit communications. The first Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance refer to “individuals” who claim to be victims, which allows for more than one applicant; also, in practice, communications from more than one individual have been considered under the first Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. While the first Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination provisions do not refer to communications being made “on behalf of” individuals, in practice the relevant committees can consider such applications, and their rules of procedure make this clear (see the rules of the Human Rights Committee, rule 96 (b), and the rules of the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination, rule 91 (b), which for example states that: as a general rule, the communication should be submitted by the individual himself or by his relatives or designated representatives; the Committee may however in exceptional cases accept to consider a communication submitted by others on behalf of an alleged victim when it appears that the victim is unable to submit the communication himself, and the author of the communication justifies his acting on the victim’s behalf). 6. Article 2 (4) of the present draft incorporates the following additional wording derived from the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (art. 2) and the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (art. 2): “Where a communication is submitted on behalf of individuals or groups of individuals, this shall be with their consent unless the author can justify acting on their behalf without such consent.” 7. During the first session of the Working Group, a number of States raised questions about how to ensure that victims who were children at the time of the violation but could not exhaust their domestic remedies before they reached the age of 18 would be able to submit communications. Therefore, the notion “individual” is used in article 2 (1), as it is in all the existing procedures, rather than “child”. To address States’ concerns about possible manipulation of child victims by those submitting communications on their behalf, 12 GE.10-15781