1. Article 43, paragraph 10, of the Convention on the Rights of the Child provides, inter alia, that "the duration of the meetings of the Committee on the Rights of the Child shall be determined and reviewed, if necessary, by a meeting of the States parties to the present Convention, subject to the approval of the General Assembly".

2. At its forty-seventh session, the General Assembly adopted resolution 47/112 in which it, inter alia, approved the organization of the work of the Committee on the basis of two sessions per year, each of up to three weeks' duration, and the establishment of a pre-sessional working group.

3. While welcoming that decision of the General Assembly, the Committee, at its third session, envisaged that further measures would soon be needed in view of the number of States parties to the Convention and the number of reports to be submitted pursuant to article 44 of the Convention.

4. The Committee, at its fourth session, further reaffirmed its concern over the ability to cope with its increasingly heavy workload and, recognizing the need to adopt urgent and adequate solutions to deal with the situation, decided to convene a special session of the Committee in 1994.

5. Recalling that the Convention on the Rights of the Child had become, within an exceptionally short period, the international human rights instrument with the largest number of ratifications, and recalling also the recommendation made by the World Conference on Human Rights that the Committee be enabled expeditiously and effectively to meet its mandate, the Committee, at its fifth session, decided to request the Secretary-General to convene a meeting of the States parties to the Convention, in advance of or during the course of the forty-ninth session of the General Assembly, with a view to reviewing, pursuant to paragraph 10 of article 43 of the Convention, the duration of the meetings of the Committee.

6. Additionally, the Committee requested the States parties at that meeting to determine that the number of annual sessions of the Committee as from 1995, as well as the number of sessions of the working group established to conduct a preliminary review of State party reports and to consider questions relating to technical assistance and international cooperation, should be increased to three. The Committee further requested the General Assembly to approve at its forty-ninth session any such determination adopted by the States parties.

7. In accordance with the Committee's request, the States parties may wish to determine that the number of annual sessions of the Committee and of its pre-sessional working groups should be increased to three, as from 1995.