A/HRC/23/19 69. Lastly, Ms. Hohenberg highlighted some examples where cooperation had been particularly fruitful, in particular with regard to awareness-raising and the exchange of good practices, collecting and disseminating information about hate crimes, capacity-building for law enforcement agencies, and responding to anti-Semitism and to intolerance against Muslims. 70. The appointee of the Special Rapporteurship on People of African Descent and against Racial Discrimination of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Hilaire Sobers, highlighted in his presentation how, in the Americas, both regional and international cooperation had made a contribution to the advancement of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, in particular through the establishment of the rapporteurship, and the ongoing process of drafting regional instruments on racism, racial discrimination and other forms of discrimination and intolerance. 71. The rapporteurship had been established through the joint efforts of community of non-governmental organizations and the State of Brazil, which had funded the rapporteurship for the first year. Since 2005, other States members of the Organization of American States (OAS) hade contributed to the funding of the rapporteurship, as had some of observer States to OAS. Another example of this cooperation was the thematic report issued by the rapporteurship in December 2011, during the International Year of Persons of African Descent, which was funded largely by donations from the European Union. 72. Mr. Sobers stated that, over the past seven years, the rapporteurship had supported and advanced the Durban Agenda in a number of ways, including the above-mentioned thematic report on the situation of people of African descent in the Americas; country visits and the relevant thematic reports thereon; the technical assistance provided to the Working Group of the Permanent Council on the draft convention; and the organization of a major conference to mark the International Year for People of African Descent. 73. With regard to the challenges faced within the inter-American system in implementing and advancing the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, Mr. Sobers stated that OAS could improve its capacity to advance the relevant agenda by taking a more proactive, programmatic approach when forging and sustaining institutional bonds of cooperation with the United Nations, civil society and other relevant actors. 74. Lastly, Mr. Sobers updated the Working Group on the process of drafting an interAmerican convention against racism and all forms of discrimination and intolerance, which had started in 2005. He noted that, initially, the project was meant to be a compendious instrument that covered multiple categories of discrimination. By 2010, however, Member States had come to an impasse in negotiations, primarily because they could not agree on the scope of the convention and, more specifically, the categories of discrimination. 75. In response to the impasse, a proposal was made that the draft convention be split into two instruments: one on racism/racial discrimination, and the other on all other types of discrimination. This proposal had since been accepted by the Working Group and, ultimately, by the General Assembly in 2012. 76. The Executive Director of the secretariat of the OIC Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission, Rizwan Saeed Sheikh, delivered a presentation on the history of OIC engagement with the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, especially with regard to one of the key areas of concern for OIC: religious intolerance and the associated “Istanbul process”. He emphasized the value of OIC as a cross-regional mechanism that cooperated and coordinated with other regional organisations at three levels: Member States, the secretariat, and the Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission. He argued for increased attention to Islamophobia as a contemporary form of racism and proposed that the focus of the Working Group on international and regional cooperation 11