A/HRC/4/104 page 17 40. The Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers focuses on adequate representation of women within the judiciary and the legal profession and advocates that offences against women, particularly violence against women including rape, domestic violence and trafficking, as well as discrimination against women, are duly investigated, prosecuted and sanctioned within the judicial system. In his visits to Ecuador, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in the second half of 2005, he met with women’s judges and lawyers associations and raised these issues with the governmental and judicial authorities that he met. In the report of his mission to Ecuador (E/CN.4/2006/52/Add.2), the Special Rapporteur regrets that, in the end, it was not possible to give effect to affirmative action to promote gender equality by setting a quota of 20 per cent of members of the court who should be women judges, in accordance with the principles contained in the Ecuadorian Constitution and in international treaties, and he recommends that this point should be borne in mind when applying the mechanism to co-opt members to fill vacant posts in the Supreme Court and in other processes to select judges for high courts in Ecuador. The Special Rapporteur also recommends the adoption of affirmative action to promote the participation of Afro-Ecuadorians or persons from indigenous groups in the above-mentioned institutions. In his report of his mission to Kyrgyzstan (E/CN.4/2006/52/Add.3), the Special Rapporteur considers that until a better balance is achieved it may be relevant to introduce affirmative action measures, with a view to enhancing the participation of women and ethnic minorities in the judiciary at all levels. 41. The Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances took note in its report to the sixty-second session of the Commission (E/CN.4/2006/56 and Corr.1) of disappearances of women. It noted that even when subjects of enforced disappearance are men, women are victims because they are the wives, sisters and mothers who are left behind, agonizing over the fate or whereabouts of their disappeared relatives. The Working Group has also dealt with cases of abductions of women and girls in several conflict situations. IV. GENDER MAINSTREAMING IN THE OFFICE OF THE HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS A. Policy and programme activities at headquarters level 42. OHCHR, through its Petitions Unit, participated in two training courses at the Women’s Human Rights Training Institute in Bulgaria in February 2005 and March 2006, organized by the Bulgarian Gender Research Foundation, the Centre for Reproductive Rights and the Network for East-West Women. The purpose was to train women lawyers from Eastern Europe to use complaints procedures under international human rights treaties, in particular the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, in their efforts to promote women’s rights. The Unit also participated in a project on the strengthening of the implementation of human rights treaty bodies’ recommendations by improving national protection mechanisms41 in June 2006 in Morocco. The Convention and its Optional Protocol, along with the presentation of shadow reports on women’s rights to treaty bodies, were broadly discussed. 41 “Renforcement de la mise en oeuvre des recommandations des organes conventionnels des droits de l’homme par le perfectionnement des mécanismes nationaux de protection”.