¹ Of those states allowing individual complaints in the context of the primary procedure of the Optional Protocol to the Civil and Political Covenant, 44 percent have never been the subject of even one complaint. In the past five years, an average of only forty-three cases per year have even been registered from eighty-one states having a combined population of one billion people.

² Frequently these include such reservations as those recently made to the Convention on the Rights of the Child by Malaysia: “The Government... expresses reservations with respect to Article 1, 2, 7, 13, 14, 15, 22, 28, 37, 40, para. 3 and 4, 44, 45 . .. and declares that the said provisions shall be applicable only if they are in conformity with the Constitution, national laws and national policies of the Government of Malaysia.”

³ Special Rapporteurs or Representatives or Experts with a country-specific mandate can also arise from outside the 1503 context. Totalling the number of country-specific procedures that are currently in existence, they are directed at only twenty-two of the 184 UN member states.