- 38 Court could only be seised of a dispute if the CERD Committee had already failed to effect conciliation. According to the Russian Federation, a new proposal for the compromissory clause, prepared by the officers of the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, mentioned only negotiation as a procedural precondition; thereafter, an amendment by Ghana, Mauritania and the Philippines (hereinafter “the Three-Power amendment”), which proposed introducing the words “or by the procedures expressly provided for in this Convention” into Article 22, was adopted unanimously. The Russian Federation infers from this addition that the drafters of CERD intended that resort to those procedures would be compulsory before referral of a dispute to the Court. 101. The Russian Federation also infers the cumulative character of the procedural preconditions under Article 22 of CERD by comparing the compromissory clauses of other human rights treaties, namely 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, the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. According to the Respondent, the compromissory clauses in these treaties set out a three-step procedure to settle disputes on their interpretation or application, envisaging negotiation as the first step, efforts to set up an arbitration over a certain period of time as the second step, and resort to the Court once that period of time has elapsed as the third step. The Russian Federation states that the dispute settlement system under Article 22 of CERD is similar to, and should be interpreted consistently with, the three-step procedure for which these treaties provide. * 102. Ukraine states that the correct interpretation of Article 22 of CERD is that it contains no preconditions to the Court’s jurisdiction. The Applicant argues that should the Court interpret Article 22 as establishing preconditions, the “most natural reading” of Article 22 is that “or” conveys that “negotiation” and the “procedures expressly provided for in this Convention” are two alternative options for resolving a dispute before the seisin of the Court. Ukraine also contends that, in Article 22, the word “or” appears three times, always with disjunctive meaning. 103. Ukraine submits that, if the CERD Committee procedure were to be considered as mandatory, the Convention would have said so explicitly. According to the Applicant, it would not make sense if Article 22 required disputing States first to negotiate within an unspecified period of time only to renegotiate for six more months in accordance with the CERD Committee procedure. Ukraine adds that the CERD Committee only hears complaints by a State party “that another State Party is not giving effect to the provisions of this Convention”, which entails that, if Article 22 required exhaustion of the CERD Committee procedure, a dispute limited to the interpretation of