Each case is considered by the committees in a closed meeting. Although the rules of procedure of some Committees provide for partial oral hearings, in practice complaints are considered only on the basis of written information provided by the complainant and the State party. Therefore, in practice, oral representations by the parties or audio or audiovisual evidence are not accepted.
The Committees also do not attempt to conduct independent fact-checking and use only information provided by the parties.
As a general rule, and to speed up the procedure, the Committees consider issues related to the admissibility and merits of the complaint simultaneously. This is followed by the general procedure described above, i.e., after a communication has been received and registered, it is transmitted to the State party concerned in order to give it an opportunity to submit comments. The applicant is then given the opportunity to comment on the State's observations, after which the case is usually ready for consideration by the committee on admissibility and merits. However, there are situations in which the committee decides to consider the issue of admissibility first. In this case, the State will be invited to submit submissions on the merits only if the Committee finds the complaint admissible. In any case, the applicant will be given the opportunity to comment on the merits of the State party's submissions.
The decision taken by the Committee shall be transmitted to the applicant and the State party simultaneously. One or more members of the committee may attach a dissenting opinion to this decision if they come to a different conclusion than the majority, or perhaps come to the same conclusion, but for different reasons. The texts of final decisions on the merits (commonly referred to as considerations) or decisions on inadmissibility are posted in full on the OHCHR website as part of the practice of reviewing cases by Committees.