Deadline for sending comments on World Oceans Assessment

The Secretariat of the United Nations presents its compliments to the Permanent Missions of Member States to the United Nations and has the honour to refer to the Note Verbale dated 29 August 2014 regarding the revised timeline for the review of the entire draft of the First Global Integrated Marine Assessment of the Regular Process.

The Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, Office of Legal Affairs, United Nations (the "Division"), acting in its capacity as secretariat of the Regular Process, circulated the initial draft chapters on 30 June 2014. On 29 August 2014, based on input from the Group of Experts, the Bureau of the Working Group decided to postpone the circulation of the entire draft, including initial draft chapters, to a date to be determined by the Bureau upon consultation with the Group of Experts.

The entire draft is currently ready for review. As indicated in paragraph 3 of the Criteria for the appointment of experts (Annex I of A/66/189), which was adopted by the General Assembly in paragraph 202 of resolution 66/231 of 24 December 2011, the review is to be done by the members of the panel of peer reviewers in parallel with the review of the draft by States and intergovernmental organizations.

The review process can be accessed at www.un.org/Depts/doalos/user. New users can create a new account, under the "create new account" tab using the following registration code: peerrev2014. The user id can be the first name and family name and under "Reviewer for" the name of the State should be selected.

Comments on the entire draft of the First Global Integrated Marine Assessment will only be accepted through this online portal. Such comments must be provided by 15 March 2015. Any questions concerning these arrangements should be addressed to doalosun [dot] org (doalos[at]un[dot]org).

The Secretariat of the United Nations avails itself of this opportunity to renew to the Permanent Missions of Member States to the United Nations the assurances of its highest consideration.