Attention with documents...

Which documents do I review? How do I get these documents?

All documents in the agenda must be reviewed. There are no irrelevant or unimportant items on the agenda. It is important to compare budgetary items with the budgets and operational plans of previous years.

Of course, it may be that several items on the agenda are of particular concern and if this is the case, it is advisable not only to review the documents submitted for consideration by the CPM, but also the background documents identified as information documents on the list of documents for the CPM meeting.

It should also be remembered that several documents may be posted late on the IPPC website, which makes itnecessary to check the Portal up to the last minute before the CPM meeting.

In addition to the documents posted in the IPPC website before the meeting, other documents are distributed during the meeting. 

      The document types and their identification are described below:

        a. Documents posted in the IPPC website before the meeting

 -Decision Documents, identified with a number on the top right hand corner, for example CMF 2013/14

 -Information Documents (INF), identified with the acronym INF and a number, for example, CMF 2013/INF/14.

 -Revised Documents (REV), identified with the acronym REV and a revision number.

 

Decision documents invite the CPM to make decisions, for example, to adopt, to note, etc. These are the most frequent type of documents and should be made available before the meeting so that members have time to consider the decisions proposed. These are always translated in all the official languages of the FAO.  Some examples are documents requiring the adoption of standards, reports to be noted , etc.

Information documents never contain decisions They usually provides background information on a specific activity or programme. The Secretariat and the Chairperson determine if they will be translated depending on the cost, the need for all members to access them in their own languages, and the source of the document.  Information documents from the Secretariat are generally translated. Documents circulated by the contracting parties or organizations are normally circulated in the language in which they were submitted.  Some countries or organizations provide documents with reviews on several decision documents on the agenda on the very day of the CPM meeting. These documents are treated as information documents even if they were submitted at the very meeting in order to ensure that all members are prepared and to facilitate discussion. The decision to produce an information document or a conference room paper  (CRP) (see below) will depend on whether members would have had the time to review them before the meeting (for example a week before the CPM is not enough time for members to review documents). Examples of information documents are the report by the  Standards Committee (SC)or   CPM Chairperson, comments sent by countries on some point of the agenda, etc.

      Revised documents, for example, CMF 2013/2/REV1 are revisions of decision, information or meeting documents, produced  after the  first version was made available to members, in order to correct errors, add information, etc. and are in the same languages as the original documents, for example the provisional agenda has several corrections, as does the list of documents

      b. Documents submitted to members at the beginning of the meeting

      Documents submitted at the beginning of the meeting are identified with a number and the acronym CRP (conference room paper), for example, CPM 2013/CRP/14.

This type of document can be either informative or may relate to a decision. It is distributed on paper to everyone participating in the plenary session and does not contain specific decisions. In consultation with the Chairperson, the Secretariat makes the decision to distribute the document as a CRP. The request by a member or organization to distribute a document must always be assessed by the Chairperson, before the CRP is produced. There are two types of CRP:

·     1_ Discussion of a decision document in the plenary results in many changes  difficult to follow orally, or the CPM might ask a group to review the text (evening session, friends of the Chair). In these cases, a CRP is produced and submitted to the CPM for a decision, in the form that it was proposed in the original document. This type of CRP document is often translated into all languages, but the decision to translate is made by the Secretariat, in consultation with the Chairperson. If the CRP modifies a decision proposed in the original decision document, and is not translated, then the modified decision must be read aloud so that it can be interpreted into all the languages.

·    2_ A country or organization provides comments or information, such as a modification to the text of a decision-related document. These CRP documents are normally presented in the language in which they were provided.

 

·     What materials do you take with you?

You should bring all the documents posted on the IPP with you to the meeting , whether in electronic or paper format, as it is not expected that these documents will be available in Rome during the meeting. Together with  the agenda, you should have the list of documents, which indicates the documents related to each item on the agenda.

In order to facilitate identification of documents, since there is usually a large quantity, they should be organized according to the agenda items that will be dealt with, and not by number in consecutive order .