A/HRC/41/29 United Nations agencies and programmes, especially accepted recommendations that fall fully within their mandate. Such a practice would assist States in achieving concrete progress in universal periodic review implementation, as well as in delivering on human rights and the Sustainable Development Goals. Establishment or strengthening of national mechanisms for reporting and follow-up 17. States have increasingly adopted comprehensive, more efficient and sustainable approaches to reporting, engagement and follow-up to recommendations through the establishment of a new type of governmental structure known as a national mechanism for reporting and follow-up. This is a permanent national governmental mechanism or structure mandated to coordinate and prepare reports to, and engage with, international and regional human rights mechanisms and to coordinate and track national follow-up to and implementation of recommendations. Such national mechanisms work in coordination with ministries and specialized State bodies, such as the national statistics office, the parliament and the judiciary, and in consultation with the national human rights institution(s) and civil society. Funding of projects for the establishment or strengthening of a national mechanism for reporting and follow-up by the Voluntary Fund will therefore serve to create sustainable capacity for reporting on and implementation of universal periodic review recommendations. Creation of a recommendations implementation plan 18. Many States develop a recommendations implementation plan, sometimes supported by database software hosted at a ministry that administers the software. Such plans, and any databases to support them, ideally cluster all recommendations from the international human rights mechanisms thematically, prioritize them and indicate implementation responsibilities, a time frame for implementation, as well as resources and indicators. The national recommendations tracking database currently under development by OHCHR will greatly assist in this task. Clustered recommendations can easily be cross linked to the Sustainable Development Goals to build synergies and linkages between the different follow-up and reporting activities related to the Goals and human rights. They can also serve as useful tools for United Nations country teams, where applicable, to inform their common country assessment and United Nations Development Assistance Frameworks and interactions with government counterparts. Strengthening parliamentary capacities for implementation 19. In its resolution 35/29, the Human Rights Council acknowledged the crucial role that parliaments play in translating international commitments into national policies and laws. This includes supporting the implementation of recommendations generated by the international human rights mechanisms, especially those from the universal periodic review that are accepted by the State. It may be noted that within the context of the universal periodic review a majority of recommendations require or involve parliamentary action. 20. In resolution 35/29, the Council also requested OHCHR to prepare a study on how to promote and enhance synergies between parliaments and the work of the Council and its universal periodic review. The resulting report (A/HRC/38/25) was based on responses to a questionnaire sent to parliaments, Member States and national human rights institutions. In the report, OHCHR stressed the importance of parliamentary human rights committees and their critical role in all phases of the universal periodic review, especially in follow-up to recommendations. Annexed to the report is a set of draft principles on parliaments and human rights, which aim to guide parliaments in setting up parliamentary human rights committees and to ensure their effective functioning. 21. The enhanced focus on parliaments as a key enabling actor in national human rights protection systems will allow OHCHR to deliver results across all six pillars of its work, as set out in its Management Plan. A strengthened role of parliaments on human rights (through their oversight, legislative and budgetary functions) will increase implementation of the recommendations of human rights mechanisms; better link human rights to national development efforts (and budgets); help prevent violations; enhance equality and counter discrimination (in particular through legislative efforts); strengthen accountability (through 5