Information in this section of Bayefsky.com is as of September 2012. To update use the UN website search engine for these two kinds of documents, links provided as follows.

• Summary records
• Summary records (general): Note: summary records on range of subjects, Disorganized

Summary records on Bayefsky.com are limited to those available in electronic form, which excludes summary records prior to 1992.

Summary records in this section are produced in full text. Consequently, a summary record catalogued under one state party may also contain information relating to another state party.

When a treaty body meets, the proceedings of each meeting is not produced as a verbatim transcript, but is produced in summary form. Hence, it is called a "Summary Record". Generally speaking, it is said to entail approximately one-third of the contents of a verbatim record.

Many meetings held by treaty bodies are "closed" or private, and in these cases summary records are not available to the public.

Where the English version of a summary record is not available, a version available in French has been included. If a summary record is only available in Spanish it has also been included.

Summary records are sub-divided on Bayefsky.com into the following types of discussion:

1. consideration of state reports and additional information from states parties
2. adoption of concluding observations by the treaty body where it is done in public session - CERD only; CAT reads them out in public session and allows states to comment
3. consideration of a state without a report
4. consideration by the treaty body of an urgent action procedure - CERD only.

In rare circumstances (at least prior to 2013), summary records which contain state-specific information do not fall within these four categories. In these cases, summary records are reproduced according to topic in another section of Bayefsky.com "Other Documents".