PART III – CIVIL SOCIETY PARTICIPATION c) Lobbying in Geneva Once in Geneva and after receiving accreditation, civil society actors can try to make informal contacts with the Committee members outside of the formal meeting hours. However, it must be noted that Committee members have quite a tight schedule when dealing with more than 10 State reports and other work and tasks during these three (or four) weeks. Illustration 15: Experience of Australian NGO Coalition: activities in Geneva83 Once we arrived in Geneva, we sought to meet with the secretariat to provide them with information on the NGO delegation likely to be in Geneva for the review, to see if we could assist with any further information and to arrange an informal lunchtime briefing of the Committee. We also arranged a meeting between the NGO delegation and the Australian Mission to the UN to discuss issues in the review. This is an important element of the relationship building to support implementation and follow up after the review. As it happened, four other NGO reports were provided to the Committee as well as a report from Australia’s NHRI, the Australian Human Rights Commission. Representatives of the organisations that submitted the other reports arrived in Geneva a couple of days before the review. At that stage all the Australian NGOs in Geneva met and began a process of working cooperatively and collaboratively to brief CERD. For the lunch time briefing, we decided to provide the Committee with lunch to enable us to increase our time with them by an extra half hour or so – so about 1.5 hours in total. It was very important to ensure that we used our limited time with the Committee in a strategic way, to ensure all relevant issues were covered and that we avoided duplication. We carefully allocated time to all speakers. It cannot be understated how difficult it is to reduce important issues to short, sharp statements for the purposes of the briefing, but also how ineffective it is to be underprepared and undisciplined with time. To support our short oral briefing, we also created short two page fact sheets on key issues of concern that we provided to the Committee as we spoke to them. We had the fact sheets interpreted into Spanish and French, given that key members of the committee did not have English as a mother tongue. This seemed to be an effective way of increasing our influence beyond the strong English speakers. d) Observing the CERD sessions Civil society can attend the session of CERD as observers. The session usually takes place in the ground floor conference room at Palais Wilson in 52 rue des Pâquis in Geneva. There are a number of seats available for the observers and State reports and other printed materials are also available in the room. If possible, it is useful for civil society actors coming to Geneva to attend other consideration of State reports by CERD in order to get familiar with the process of CERD meetings. Although as observers civil society actors do not have the right to formally take part in the dialogue between states and CERD, they can directly see and even audio record what questions and issues the Committee members raise, how states respond thereto, and again how the Committee reacts to those replies. The entire discussion will be interpreted simultaneously into English, French and Spanish, and additionally into Arabic, Chinese or Russian when Committee members or the states delegation speak those languages.
Following the session from outside Geneva: A press release on the consideration of a State party by CERD is usually issued on the following day84 detailing the progress of the dialogue, however, this is not an official UN document. A “summary record” is issued as the 83 Communication from Ms. Emily Howie, Director – Advocacy and Strategic Litigation, Human Rights Law Resource Centre 31 ICERD & CERD: A GUIDE FOR CIVIL SOCIETY ACTORS