A/HRC/38/37 priorities, making decisions, planning, implementing and evaluating strategies to achieve better health.70 42. Civil society organizations play a vital role in holding authorities to account, reaching populations and communities that are frequently overlooked, and advocating for their rights. Recent trends towards restrictions on civic space, particularly limitations on the activities of civil society organizations, constitute a significant challenge to ensuring the effective participation of a wide range of stakeholders. Examples of restrictions include legislative and bureaucratic barriers, including onerous registration requirements, the harassment, intimidation and killing of advocates, censorship and the use of criminal legislation to penalize health workers, currently widespread in certain conflict situations. 71 43. The Special Rapporteur on health refers to an unbalanced approach to human rights, where undue restrictions in the enjoyment of civil and political rights undermine the full realization of the right to health, leading to a failure to implement the principles of participation and empowerment, and undermining the crucial role that civil society can play in promoting societal health and well-being.72 In the context of promoting human rights within the European Union for example, civil society organizations have noted that limitations include: a lack of clarity and transparency regarding who is consulted before decisions are made; no systematic consultation of all key players; limited access to information on policy or legal initiatives; and a lack of awareness of the various modes and methods of involving stakeholders in law and policymaking in a meaningful and effective way.73 44. In order to ensure meaningful participation, the full spectrum of stakeholders must be recognized, and those who are typically excluded from participatory processes, such as persons with disabilities, children, youth and adolescents, women, older persons and persons living in remote or rural areas, must be included. Examples of human rights-based interventions include: (a) ensuring an enabling regulatory, administrative and financial environment for civil society organizations; (b) building, through education and awarenessraising, the capacity of rights holders to participate and to claim their rights; (c) ensuring that transparent and accessible mechanisms for engaging stakeholders’ participation and facilitating regular communication between rights holders and health-service providers are established and/or strengthened at the community, subnational and national levels; and (d) ensuring stakeholders’ participation in priority setting, in policy and programme design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation and in accountability mechanisms. V. Emerging good practices 45. The call for contributions towards the present report elicited a large number of submissions, including examples of what could be considered as emerging good practices. Due to space constraints, several emblematic examples are highlighted below, and all the submissions may be viewed on the OHCHR website. 46. The criteria proposed for the characterization of good health practices by the Special Rapporteur on health in 2003 are helpful in understanding whether a good health practice also amounts to a right to health good practice. From the perspective of the right to health, a good practice must: demonstrably enhance an individual’s or group’s enjoyment of one or more elements of the right to health; pay particular attention to groups in vulnerable situations; and be consistent with the enjoyment of all human rights in process and outcome.74 Practices that meet the above-mentioned criteria also enhance the availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of health facilities, goods and services, the active and 70 71 72 73 74 14 See Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 14, para. 54. World Alliance for Citizen Participation (CIVICUS), “People power under attack: findings from the CIVICUS Monitor” (April 2017). See A/HRC/29/33, para. 58. European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Challenges facing civil society organisations working on human rights in the EU (Luxembourg, 2017), pp. 39–40. See A/58/427, para. 45.