Members of a working group established to negotiate and finalize a draft outcome document for the Review Conference begin formal negotiations 19 -23 January, 2009.

A compilation of proposals towards an outcome document had been put together at last October’s Review Conference Preparatory Committee meeting, but the compilation was made up of six initial proposals submitted by regional and other groups, and because it contained elements from so many sources, it was long, repetitive and not coherently organized.

The intersessional open-ended intergovernmental working group was charged by the Preparatory Committee to continue work on the document. At its first formal meeting on November 27, 2008, the working group, which is open to the participation of all Member States, agreed that its preliminary stage of work should be a technical review of the proposals and that it should remove duplications, harmonize sections and drastically reduce the text.

One month later, following work that had been conducted in a series of informal meetings, the Chair of the working group, Russian Diplomat Yuri Boychenko, submitted to Member States a streamlined and rationalized compilation, reduced from more than 130 pages to just 38. is posted on the Durban Review Conference Website.