A/HRC/40/78 the Board the role that OHCHR could play, and is expected to play, in supporting meaningful action by the private sector. B. Forty-seventh session (Santiago de Chile) 24. The second session of the Board in 2018 took place in Santiago de Chile where OHCHR has its Regional Office for South America. The Board decided to postpone the session in Geneva to March 2019 to coincide with the presentation of the annual report of the Chair to the Human Rights Council to optimize the use of resources. The main purpose of the session was to increase understanding and offer advice on the type of technical cooperation that OHCHR provides in a regional context. 25. The Board also took the opportunity of the session and the recently launched OHCHR four-year plan, to explore with OHCHR and its partners in the region the advisory services and technical cooperation experience in areas identified as frontier issues. The Board welcomes the initiative to enhance the work, knowledge and support for the relations between human rights and the frontier issues, such as corruption, climate change, inequality and the displacement and movement of people, and the impact on human rights of those issues. Those are all critical issues where, in the view of the Board, the expertise and experience of OHCHR is essential to supporting a wider and better understanding of their human rights dimensions and implications. For that reason, the Board, starting from its forty-seventh session, decided to gather experiences and discuss the technical cooperation components that could serve to support States in advancing in these important areas. The Board decided to begin with the human rights dimensions of corruption, with particular emphasis on the impact of corruption on the State duty to respect, protect and fulfil economic, civil, social, political and cultural rights. OHCHR technical support is very much needed to help explain how human rights can support efforts to combat corruption. 26. The data collected and analysis conducted by OHCHR following extensive consultations across the world in the preparation of its new programme confirmed the undeniable spread and corrosive effect of corruption on State institutions and on the capacity to effectively protect and fulfil human rights. Public confidence in institutions and governance is negatively affected as a result, while indices of social and economic inequality have increased in a majority of countries. Corruption also severely reduces the amount of public funds available for the provision of basic services, such as education and health, and therefore adversely affects the basic human rights of millions of people. 27. In the Americas region, the two OHCHR Regional Offices for Central and South America have been working closely with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on the impact of corruption on human rights. In December 2017 a workshop on corruption and human rights was organized, which contributed to the development and further adoption of Inter-American Commission resolution 1/18 on corruption and human rights. The resolution is the first comprehensive approach of the inter-American human rights system to establish the link between corruption and human rights and to determine specific measures and recommendations to combat corruption, putting victims at the centre of those efforts. In the resolution, the Commission stated that corruption was a complex phenomenon that affected human rights in their entirety, undermined democracy and the rule of law, promoted impunity and exacerbated inequality. The Commission also highlighted the importance of independent and impartial justice, citizen oversight over procurement practices and budget management, transparency and freedom of expression, and adequate protection of justice operators, human rights defenders, journalists and whistle-blowers, and international cooperation, among other measures. The Commission committed to developing further the links between corruption and human rights abuse and its mechanisms and reports. 28. Corruption and impunity have become central issues in the current public debate in many countries of the Americas region. The Board discussed with experts and a number of partners, including State representatives, the challenges that corruption poses for human rights at all levels and the type of interventions through research, advocacy, advisory services and technical cooperation that could be useful to support States. The Chair of the 6

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