International Human Rights and the International Human Rights System A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions The approach to recommendations opens the way for NHRIs to have their views incorporated into UPR reports. Many States are committed to good reports with good and appropriate recommendations but they rarely have enough knowledge and experience of every State under review to be able to formulate good, appropriate recommendations themselves. They look to independent experts – certainly NHRIs and often NGOs – for advice. Drawing on their own expert knowledge, NHRIs can propose good, appropriate recommendations to States and then see those recommendations included in UPR reports. They can make their proposals in the information they provide to the UPR or, more effectively, in approaches to individual States or groups of States before and during the UPR examination. 5.4. HRC plenary debate and adoption of the report The UPR Working Group report on each State under review is considered and adopted at a regular session of the HRC soon after the completion of the Working Group session. An hour is allocated for the consideration of each individual report. The hour is apportioned between the State under review (20 minutes), HRC member and observer States (20 minutes) and other observers, that is, NHRIs and NGOs (20 minutes). The State under review speaks first. It is expected to respond to the recommendations in the Working Group report either before the plenary debate or at it. The State under review will inform the Council about its views concerning the recommendations and/or conclusions as well as voluntary commitments/pledges whenever it is in a position to do so, during the meeting of the Working Group, or between the session of the Working Group and the next session of the Council, or during the meeting of the Council at its plenary session.117 On the basis of this response, the report of the debate identifies the recommendations that the State under review supports, the recommendations that it is still considering and the recommendations that it does not support.118 The State can then be held accountable for its implementation of the recommendations it supports and it can later be questioned and pressed in relation to those it does not.119 The “A status” NHRI of the State under review has special status. It is “entitled to intervene immediately after the State under review during the adoption of the outcome of the review by the Council plenary”.119 The ordinary rules of procedure of the HRC apply and so all other “A status” NHRIs are also permitted to make oral statements during the debate after member and observer States. However, statements must be directed towards the draft report, not the interactive dialogue with the State under review. This provides a very broad scope for comments but some statements have received objections and some speakers have been prevented from continuing because of complaints that their statements do not address the draft report. 117 HRC Presidential Statement 8/1; para. 11. 118 HRC Resolution 5/1; Part I.D.; para. 32. 119 HRC Resolution 16/21; para. 13. Chapter 6: Universal Periodic Review | 43