At
the end of each session, the Commission adopts a report to the
General Assembly, covering the work of the session, on the basis
of a draft prepared by the General Rapporteur
with the assistance of the Special
Rapporteurs concerned and the Secretariat.1
The report includes information concerning the organization
of the session, the progress of work and the future work of the
Commission on the topics given substantive consideration during
the session, the texts of draft articles and commentaries adopted
by the Commission during the session, any procedural recommendations
of the Commission calling for a decision on the part of the General
Assembly as well as other decisions and conclusions of the Commission.2
Notice
on the issuance of the Report of the International Law Commission
for the 58th session of the Commission.
The structure of the report has changed from time
to time.The Commission has
made changes with respect to the preparation and content
of its report to facilitate a more structured and focused
debate in the Sixth Committee. In 1992, the Commission adopted
guidelines on the preparation and content of its report
which provide, inter alia, as follows: (a) efforts should
continue to avoid excessively long reports; (b) the report
should include a chapter providing, in a summary form, a
general view of the work of the session to which the report
refers, including a list of questions on which the Commission
would find the views of the Sixth Committee particularly
helpful; (c) parts of the report indicating previous work
on each topic should continue to be as brief as possible;
(d) the summary of debates should be more compact, giving
emphasis to trends of opinions rather than to individual
views unless such an individual view was a reservation to
a decision taken by the Commission; and (e) the presentation
of fragmentary results that can not be properly assessed
by the Sixth Committee without additional elements should
be a summary, with the indication that the matter will be
more fully presented in a future report. The Commission
has requested the Secretariat to circulate the chapters
of the report containing a summary of the Commission's work
and the specific issues on which views from Governments
would be particularly useful (Chapters II and III) as well
as the text of draft articles adopted at each session shortly
after the end of the session before the report is issued.3
At present, it is divided into the following main
chapters: the first chapter deals with organizational issues;
the second chapter summarizes the work of the session; the
third chapter identifies specific issues on which comments
of Governments would be of particular interest to the Commission;
subsequent chapters are devoted to each of the different
topics considered at the session; and the last chapter contains
other decisions and conclusions of the Commission. The Commission
may also decide to include other relevant documents, such
as reports of working groups, in an annex to its report.4
The Commission’s annual report is the means by which
it keeps the General Assembly informed on a regular basis
of the progress of its work on the various topics on its
current programme as well as of its achievements in the
preparation of draft articles on these topics. The report
is also the means by which the Commission’s drafts are given
the necessary publicity provided for in articles 16 and
21 of its Statute.5
3See Yearbook
of the International Law Commission, 1977, vol. II (Part
Two), para. 130 and Official Records of the
General Assembly, Fifty-eighth Session, Supplement No.
10 (A/58/10),
para. 445. In 1996, the Commission recommended that the
issues on which comment is specifically sought from the
Sixth Committee should be identified, if possible, before
the adoption of draft articles on the point and these
issues should be of a more general, "strategic"
character rather than issues of drafting technique. See
Yearbook
of the International Law Commission, 1996, vol. II (Part
Two), paras. 148 (c) and 181. In 2003, the Commission
further noted that Special Rapporteurs may wish to provide
sufficient background and substantive elaboration to better
assist Governments in developing their responses. See
Official Records of the General Assembly, Fifty-eighth
Session, Supplement No. 10 (A/58/10),
para. 446.
4The Commission’s
report on its first session and as of its twenty-first
session is published as Supplement
No. 10of theOfficial Records of the General Assembly. The Commission’s report
on its second session was published as Supplement
No. 12 and on its third to twentieth sessions as Supplement No. 9of theOfficial Records of the General Assembly.
The report is subsequently published in the Yearbook
of the International LawCommission
(volume II, except for the 1949Yearbook which consists of only one volume)
together with a check-list of the documents issued during
the session.
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