A/HRC/21/51 President underlined her desire to strengthen interaction with the Coordination Committee, her support for its role and willingness to defend the independence of mandate holders. 25. The participants expressed appreciation for the opportunities given to special procedures to engage with the Human Rights Council, for example, during special sessions and panel discussions, but pointed out that the quality of interactive dialogues could be improved perhaps by revisiting the practice of clustering the interactive dialogues of several special procedures, building on lessons learned in relation to the time management initiatives introduced in the context of universal periodic review and Council panel discussions. Mandate holders discussed ways of improving their interaction with the Council, such as through informal meetings with States and side events, where more time would be available for interaction. The joint initiatives of special procedures were useful to maximize impact, ensure coherence and increase awareness of human rights issues. It was noted that joint statements, including to the Council, joint reports and visits posed challenges, but were nonetheless valuable. The specificity of country mandates was highlighted, while cooperation between country and thematic mandates was considered to be a good way to ensure complementarity and mutual reinforcement among mandates. VI. Thematic issues and working methods A. Human rights mainstreaming 26. The participants exchanged views with the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Malaysia, Kamal Malhotra, the Human Rights Policy Adviser of the United Nations Development Operations Coordination Office, United Nations Development Group, and representatives of the International Labour Organization, OHCHR, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Environment Programme, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization, all members of the United Nations Development Group Human Rights Mainstreaming Mechanism. 27. It was pointed out that the United Nations Development Group Human Rights Mechanism was established in 2009 at the request of the Secretary-General in order to institutionalize the mainstreaming of human rights in the development work of the United Nations. Made up of 19 United Nations agencies, funds and programmes and chaired by OHCHR, with a rotating vice-chairperson (currently UNICEF), the Mechanism aims to strengthen the coordination of United Nations responses to requests from Member States for support in their efforts to fulfil international human rights commitments. Its objectives are to strengthen system-wide coherence and collaboration, and provide support for resident coordinators, regional Development Group teams, United Nations country teams and national partners to mainstream human rights. One priority in developing a coherent, system-wide approach to strengthening national human rights protection systems is to support the engagement of country teams with human rights mechanisms. Feedback from the country teams on their experience of working with special procedures highlights the contributions of mandate holders to support for the normative work of the United Nations, follow-up at the national level, public awareness-raising and strengthening of local civil society, while raising sensitive human rights issues. 28. It was noted that resident coordinators and United Nations country teams could engage with special procedures in all aspects of their mandates, including in the preparation and execution of, and follow-up to, country visits and work on thematic issues. In these contexts, the different mandates of special procedures and the country teams should be borne in mind. 9