A/HRC/29/48 the Office is in place. The medium– and long-term engagement needed to see the results of capacity-building efforts is another critical aspect. In this regard, the experiences of the offices in Tunisia and Palestine serve as an inspiration for similar programmes in other parts of the region and in other regions. B. Forty-first session 14. Pursuant to the Board’s practice of holding one of its two meetings each year in a State where OHCHR has a field presence, the forty-first session was held in Phnom Penh from 9 to 11 February 2015 and in Bangkok from 12 to 13 February 2015. This was the fourth time that a session of the Board was organized outside Geneva. 15. The visit to the OHCHR country office in Cambodia, the oldest OHCHR field presence established in 1993 tracing its origins back to the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia, represented an excellent opportunity for the Board to observe in situ how the various components of the work of the Office, including its technical cooperation programmes, work together to better serve and support national efforts to ensure the enjoyment of human rights by all. The main purpose of the visits, as in the case of previous sessions and visits to the field, was to continue to gather in situ observations of the added value of OHCHR technical cooperation efforts and areas that required strengthening in the design and implementation of OHCHR programmes. The Board also had the opportunity to explore how the design and implementation of such programmes were intimately linked with all components of the various areas of work of the Office and how the Office works with the rest of the United Nations family to promote human rights. 16. The visit to the OHCHR Regional Office for South East Asia in Bangkok was an opportunity for Board members to better understand the type of support being provided from a regional setting. The Board noted that the Office had gone through important transformations for the three previous years, which have strengthened the capacity of OHCHR to respond to, and to provide support in, complex situations. The Board was pleased to be able to observe an OHCHR regional office in action, and welcomed the efforts made to strengthen the regional office further. The visit confirmed its view of the importance for OHCHR of continuing to seek to establish regional offices in all regions to ensure global coverage and the global implementation of the full mandate of the High Commissioner, in accordance with General Assembly resolution 48/141. While in Bangkok, the Board also held discussions with the human rights advisers deployed to United Nations country teams in the region. The Advisers had been deployed with support of the Voluntary Fund to States such as Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea, or are being deployed under the United Nations Development Group – Human Rights Working Group framework to States including Timor-Leste and the Philippines. 17. In Cambodia, the Board discussed technical cooperation activities by the OHCHR presence in the country with different national authorities, United Nations partners and civil society organizations. This included visits to selected projects, such as the resettlement site at Oudong, the Court in Kampong Speu and the Correctional Centre 1, where the Board was briefed on the specific situation of human rights on the basis of the Office’s observations and how specific technical cooperation programmes and advisory services supported national institutions, in particular State authorities, including the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Justice, in addressing remaining challenges. 18. During the visit, the Board held discussions with representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of the Interior and other relevant State institutions on the support provided in various thematic areas, including through technical cooperation and advisory services, for example, on follow-up to recommendations made by human rights 6

Select target paragraph3

Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents