The Committee on Conscience maintains a "standing agenda" of situations and issues within its mandate. In order to allow the Committee to take up situations and focus attention on them in a timely manner, the agenda uses graduated categories of urgency:
WATCH:The circumstances indicate a serious potential for the eruption of mass violence that would be within the Committee’s mandate;
WARNING:Organized violence is underway that threatens to become genocide or related crimes against humanity;
EMERGENCY:Acts of genocide or related crimes against humanity are occurring or immediately threatened.