A/HRC/15/40 be a standing item on the list of issues that are included in each State report. A standardized set of questions could be produced, as well as contextualized questions for each country under review, to give greater prominence to discriminatory laws and the steps that States are willing to undertake to address them as part of the UPR procedure. B. UN Women 56. The Division for the Advancement of Women and OHCHR have had an annual joint workplan, requiring reporting to the Human Rights Council and the Commission on the Status of Women. Following the establishment of UN Women, this could be replaced by a joint workplan between OHCHR and UN Women. An initial focus of the new workplan could be equality before the law. This would build on previous work by the constituent entities of UN Women in relation to the identification, analysis, and development of appropriate legislative and policy responses to discriminatory laws. The judicial colloquia on the human rights of women organized by the Division; the work related to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, carried out by the United Nations Development Fund for Women; and publications such as the handbooks on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women for parliamentarians and on legislation relating to violence against women,56 might be built on. C. Establishment of a new thematic procedure 57. A further possibility is the establishment of a new special procedure of the Council that would focus on laws and practices that discriminate against women. During the plenary panel discussion on “equality before the law” held at the eleventh session of the Council, a number of States and other entities considered such a mechanism an effective means of advancing efforts to address this problem.57 However, the question has also been raised as to whether this would contribute effectively to the elimination of discriminatory laws, without unnecessarily duplicating the work of existing bodies whose mandates cover some aspects of the topic.58 58. The issue here is not whether there is formally some substantive overlap of coverage, but whether a new mechanism would complement the work of the existing human rights machinery. While concerns about duplication have been raised in relation to other thematic mandates, such overlap between a proposed thematic mechanism and the mandate of a treaty body has not been a bar to its establishment. In relation to rights monitored by the Human Rights Committee, there is overlap with 56 57 58 Inter-Parliamentary Union, The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women: Handbook for Parliamentarians (Geneva, 2003); Handbook for legislation on violence against women (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.10.IV.2 ). Cross-regional statement of 16 June 2009 by Chile on behalf of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, France, Hungary, Mexico, Norway, Slovenia, Switzerland, United States of America and Uruguay. Statements made during the plenary panel discussion on “equality before the law” during the eleventh session of the Human Rights Council are available on the extranet of the Council, at http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/. Summaries of replies to the note verbale of 29 March 2010 soliciting information from stakeholders in relation to the issues to be addressed in the present report, are available in an addendum to the present report (A/HRC/15/40/Add.1). 15