A/HRC/41/25 C. Technical cooperation and development aid 54. In order to ensure that human rights are better promoted and protected, in the mid1950s the General Assembly established a technical cooperation programme in the field of human rights aimed at helping States, at their request, to build or strengthen national infrastructures that have a direct impact on the promotion and protection of human rights. The programme focuses on the incorporation of international human rights standards into national laws and policies; on the building or strengthening of national institutions; on the formulation of national plans of action for the promotion and protection of human rights; on human rights education and training; and on promoting a human rights culture. 55. As the requests for assistance grew and thus the need to supplement the programme became evident, the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation in the Field of Human Rights was established. Programmes implemented by OHCHR through the fund benefit from the advice of a Board of Trustees, consisting of five members appointed by the Secretary-General. The Chair of the Board, which is also the Board of the Voluntary Fund for Financial and Technical Assistance in the Implementation of the Universal Periodic Review, reports regularly to the spring session of the Human Rights Council, under agenda item 10, most recently on 21 March 2019. 56. The Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation aims to provide financial support for technical cooperation with a view to strengthening national and regional institutions and legal frameworks and infrastructure that will have a positive long-term impact on the implementation of international human rights standards. In 2018, programmes were implemented in 40 regions, countries and territories in close cooperation with Member States and other partners, complementing other funding tools available to OHCHR (A/HRC/40/78, para. 63). 57. The Voluntary Trust Fund for Participation in the Universal Periodic Review, aimed at facilitating the participation of developing countries, particularly the least developed countries and landlocked developing countries, in the universal periodic review, and the Voluntary Fund for Financial and Technical Assistance in the Implementation of the Universal Periodic Review are also a source of financial and technical assistance that facilitates participation in the universal periodic review or the implementation of recommendations arising from it (see A/HRC/38/26 and 27). 58. During the high-level panel at the thirty-seventh session of the Human Rights Council, the Chair of the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which provided $145 billion in ODA in 2016, stated that according to data produced by the International Aid Transparency Initiative, there were around 2,300 active projects around the world with human rights as the primary focus and the total spend on bilateral projects labelled as human rights projects had been around $700 million in 2016. She further stated that it was obvious that development cooperation and many such projects were directly linked to the implementation of recommendations arising from the universal periodic review. That link could be stronger and was the responsibility of both the country under review and the donor country. Apart from specific human rights projects, many donors also mainstreamed human rights in all their activities. While the universal periodic review was not used or discussed in the Development Assistance Committee, the Chair of the Committee emphasized that for members of the Committee it was an important tool in coordinating their bilateral development cooperation in specific countries. She noted that when there was a will to address human rights issues, development partners and donors should support and be ready to tailor their support to the recommendations put forward during the universal periodic review. 59. While most development cooperation entities recognized the strong link between development and human rights, the Development Assistance Committee, which provided guidance to those national entities through its own peer reviews, could be encouraged to consider systematically in those reviews whether and how supported recommendations arising from the universal periodic review were actually implemented in countries that were recipients of ODA. Currently, such reviews focused on poverty, gender, the environment 12