INTERPOL’s Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files(CCF) has finished its second session of the year, and the remaining dates of its sessions in 2024 are posted on its website. The remaining sessions are listed on INTERPOL’s website as follows:
- 129th session: Summer 2024 (date unspecified)
- 130th session: Autumn 2024 (date unspecified)
Only three sessions per year are required of the Commission members to discuss and decide upon all requests the CCF receives. With four sessions planned in 2024 instead of the usual three, the CCF will be more productive as members will have more time to consider each request and take on more cases.
More time for the CCF
While the increase in CCF sessions this year should be beneficial, it would be productive for the Commission to routinely schedule more sessions so that all requests will be processed and decided in a timely manner.
There currently does not appear to be an adjustment of the number of sessions held to correspond to the workload that the Commission faces. For example, according to the CCF’s annual activity reports, the CCF received 643 new requests in 2015, and 1,417 in 2021, but convened only four times in both years. This means that INTERPOL’s CCF held the same number of sessions despite receiving over twice as many requests.
If the Commission adjusted its scheduled meetings to more closely reflect the number of requests it had to review, using the years 2015 and 2021 as examples, the CCF would have held 8-9 sessions in 2021 to review new requests.
Effect of work overload: delayed responses to Applicants
It is our observation that the CCF’s Requests Chamber has recently not complied with its own rules regarding timely responses. Given the CCF’s history of punctual responses since the inception of deadlines over 6 years ago, it is reasonable to assume that this lack of compliance is due to an unmanageably high workload.
Our next post will examine what INTERPOL has done to improve the CCF’s efficiency, and how it can advance even further.
As always, thoughts and comments are welcomed.
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