A/HRC/WG.7/2/2 Annex Letter from the Chairperson-Rapporteur of the Open-ended Working Group on an optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Mr. Drahoslav Štefánek, to the members of the Working Group The Human Rights Council, in its resolution 13/3 of 24 March 2010, decided to extend the mandate of the Open-ended Working Group on an optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child to provide a communications procedure until the seventeenth session of the Council, and at the same time, mandated the Open-ended Working Group to elaborate an optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child to provide a communications procedure. In the above resolution, the Human Rights Council also requested the ChairpersonRapporteur of the Open-ended Working Group to prepare a proposal for a draft optional protocol to be used as a basis for the forthcoming negotiations of the Open-ended Working Group. According to the resolution, the proposal for a draft optional protocol should be circulated by September 2010 in all the official languages of the United Nations. It was specified in the resolution that the Chairperson-Rapporteur should take into account the views expressed and inputs provided during the first session of the Open-ended Working Group (16–18 December 2009), give due regard to the views of the Committee on the Rights of the Child and, where appropriate, to the views of relevant United Nations special procedures and other experts. Ahead of the important task conferred upon me, I elaborated a non-paper containing possible elements of the draft optional protocol, which was circulated by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to all the Permanent and Observer Missions in Geneva on 17 May 2010. The non-paper was discussed during the informal consultations with Member and Observer States of the United Nations and other stakeholders on 26 May 2010 in Geneva. I was listening carefully to comments presented at this meeting and received with appreciation additional ones in writing. While preparing the proposal for a draft optional protocol, I profited also from the expert consultations in which I participated on 21 and 22 June 2010 in Geneva. The consultations on the optional protocol were organized by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in cooperation with the International Commission of Jurists. A number of United Nations and civil society experts on the rights of the child took part in the consultations, including the Chairperson and the Vice-Chairperson of the Committee on the Rights of the Child. I have prepared the proposal in the light of the importance of ensuring consistency and coherence within the expanding range of international human rights instruments. Thus, wherever possible and appropriate, the draft uses agreed language from the optional protocols and/or provisions of the treaties, which have created the existing communications procedures under the core human rights treaties. The draft also takes into account the expert submissions and views expressed in the discussion during the first session of the Openended Working Group in December 2009. The explanatory memorandum to the proposal for a draft optional protocol contains a rationale for each article of the proposal, for ease of orientation also with references to provisions of the existing instruments that have been used as inspiration. 22 GE.10-15781