A/HRC/15/56 regularly issuing joint declarations or statements related to human rights violations, or other important issues within their mandates. (d) Raising awareness and technical cooperation activities (i) Participants highlighted the need to promote awareness on international and regional human rights mechanisms and the standards that they seek to secure among as many actors as possible, in particular at the national level. For this purpose, joint actions should be undertaken on specific thematic areas, such as workshops and training sessions with the participation of experts and staff from the various human rights mechanisms. These might include the protection of human rights defenders, arbitrary detention, and economic, social and cultural rights. In addition, documents of the human rights mechanisms should be translated into as many languages as possible. This will ensure that the widest possible number of individuals will be able to access them. States could assist in funding the translation of such documents. The role of the NGOs was unanimously highlighted, given their knowledge of human rights mechanisms and their capacity to interact with a great number of stakeholders at the international, regional and national levels. They should, therefore, take part in these activities from the planning stage onwards; (ii) Joint technical cooperation activities were also recommended, in order to allow human rights mechanisms to benefit from each other’s expertise on specific topics, as well as to expand their knowledge on each other’s best practices, jurisprudence, methods of work and rules of procedure. For example, European human rights mechanisms, such as the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) could help specialized regional and national bodies to consolidate their positions and activities on issues related to its mandate. The United Nations human rights mechanisms could also assist in strengthening the capacity of regional human rights mechanisms, taking into account their specific needs. For instance, special procedures mandate holders or treaty body members can provide advice on specific thematic issues, e.g. the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance could provide expertise to the Inter-American system on the establishment of a rapporteur on racism; (iii) The need to strengthen joint efforts to provide technical cooperation to States was also underscored. Such efforts could include joint training and programmes to promote a human rights culture through promotion of human rights standards at all levels of society, and specifically for NHRIs, judges, civil society, local government, parliaments, and security and law enforcement agencies; (iv) Participants agreed that capacity-building activities must be sustainable and genuinely helpful. The need to secure adequate resources was also highlighted. (e) Follow-up (i) A main area of cooperation between international and regional human rights mechanisms is the follow-up on decisions and recommendations. The workshop showed that despite the existence of follow-up mechanisms at the international and regional levels, the implementation of recommendations, judgments and views remains a great challenge to all human rights mechanisms. Participants agreed on the need to develop joint follow-up 14