The nomination of Focal Points, Experts and Observers shall be communicated through a Note Verbale to be sent to the email untoc.review@un.org, indicating the name, title, email and role of the nominated participants.
Upon receipt of the Note Verbale, the Secretariat will register the participants in REVMOD, and send them the activation links. Through this link, Focal Points, Experts and Observers will be able to create their profile in REVMOD and submit it for approval.
Links have an expiration time of 10 days. If your link does not work, please, send an email to unodc-revmod@un.org, and we will resend the REVMOD activation email to you. Always check your spam folder to ensure that you can timely access the link.
The Secretariat will cross-check the information you have to your profile against the Note Verbale received from the Permanent Mission and will either approve it or ask for clarification as appropriate. Upon approval of the profile, you will have access to the reviews you were assigned. You will also be notified per email once your profile is approved.
The password shall contain at least 3 capital letters, 3 small letters, 3 numbers and 3 special characters. A password sample could be: PASSWORDpassword123!?#
REVMOD can be accessed through the following URL: http://revmod.unodc.org/
It is possible to change the email – however, in order to proceed with such change, the Secretariat needs a new Note Verbale from the Permanent Mission indicating the new email.
The focal point is the user coordinating the participation of the State in the review. Hence the Focal Point, in each of the steps of the review process, is tasked with validating the final submission drafted by governmental experts and confirm the finalization of his/her country’s inputs.
No. We can only assign one Focal Point per review.
Resolutions 9/1 and 10/1 do of UNTOC-COP do not envisage a direct role for permanent missions in the context of the Review Mechanism. However, the Secretariat still value the cooperation with permanent missions – as it is extremely important to keep an open channel of communication with States parties. In this sense, some States have added to their list of authorized users for REVMOD personnel from their permanent mission, usually – but not only – with the role of observers – which means that this user will have access to the whole content of the review in view-only mode.
The questionnaire, prepared and adopted by the Conference of the Parties in its resolution 10/1, is available here. While the preparation can be done offline, it is important that the final submission is done using REVMOD, the software that UNODC developed for the specific purpose of the review process and that was adopted by UNTOC-COP resolution 10/1.
The review process for the 1st group (country list available here) has formally started in December 2020, according to the indicative timeline. However, once the three countries involved have appointed their focal points, the Secretariat will call for the preliminary consultation in order to get an agreement on deadlines and languages of the review process. In this opportunity, the Secretariat will also offer its support to moderate the meeting. This call for preliminary consultation marks the official start of a review, from which the deadlines for steps will be counted.
It means that the Secretariat has not yet received the nominations of Focal Points from at least one of the countries involved in the review.
Absolutely not. The self-assessment questionnaire is available for the representatives of the country under review as soon as they have access to REVMOD – and it does not depend on the completion of the preliminary consultation step. Hence, you can already work on it. Note that the sooner you are able to complete your questionnaire, the faster the review can progress when the focal points from the reviewing countries are nominated. In any case, please do not “vote to close” the Step A (in other words, do not submit the questionnaire for review) before having had the preliminary consultation – as the languages of the review might still need to be discussed.
The deadline you are referring to comes from the indicative timeline of the review process that was included in one of the annexes of resolution 10/1. Considering that any of the reviewing Parties has not yet appointed its focal point, the official deadlines of the review have not been formalized yet. Once the three countries have appointed their focal point, the Secretariat will contact you for the preliminary consultation and, in that context, a different deadline can be agreed.
As this is an intergovernmental process, it is not up to the Secretariat to decide upon the deadlines. Please, contact the Focal Points from the other countries involved and – if they agree – the dates can be changed in REVMOD Preliminary Consultation step.
According to the resolution 9/1, the Review Mechanism is structured on 4 thematic clusters of articles based on their subject matter. Furthermore, according to the indicative timeline, available here, each thematic cluster shall last 2 years. Once the first cluster/phase is completed, the second one starts - following the same steps as the first one. However, the advancement to the second cluster is not automatic - it depends on a decision from the Conference of the parties (resolution 9/1, par. 10), which will have its next regular session in October 2022.
Focal Points are the users coordinating the participation of the State in the review. Each country can appoint one and only one focal point per each review in which it takes part. Focal points can be changed along the process but there can only be one focal point per country per review at any given time. In each step of the review process, the focal point clears the final submission drafted by governmental experts,certifying that the final output of each step is agreeable to his/her country.
Governmental experts contribute substantively to the review process responding to the questionnaires (experts of the State under review), providing feedback and drafting the list of observations and summaries. All experts are also involved in a constant process of consultation and dialogue as needed and appropriate during the process.
Observers have access to the content of the reviews but cannot modify it and are not to perform any action. Their access is in the so-called “read only” mode.