Rhyme and Reason

I have been looking a the shadow reports of various NGO's to the UN Human Rights Council, and studying up on the procedure. Its disappointing mostly. It looks like the average number of stakeholder shadow reports submitted for each country is around 9 or 10. Each report is limited to five pages. As if that limitation were not enough, they are all summarized by the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights into a ten page document. In other words, our semesters worth of work might result in getting a paragraph's worth of input into the mid 2010 review of Guyana's human rights record.

I understand the need for this procedure. But I can't help but think it needs to be opened up a little. The summary of the reports should be longer. Maybe 20 or 30 pages instead of only 10. Or perhaps the summary's length should depend upon the number of shadow reports submitted in some type of ratio. But the current policy is almost loony.