A/HRC/39/24 coordinated national implementation of treaty obligations and recommendations. For example, since Portugal had created a light structure based on a network of focal points, in 2010, there were no reports to the treaty bodies that were currently outstanding. In Geneva, some 30 States were part of an informal groups of friends on national mechanisms for reporting and follow-up. Those mechanisms could contain a broad range of actors from the related ministries, national human rights institutions, United Nations country teams and OHCHR field presences. Paraguay also had a mechanism to link planning for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals with human rights. She noted that Portugal used specific indicators to track implementation of the right to education, violence against women, the right to health and the right to liberty and security of the person. 40. Mr. Fasel underscored the need for appropriate indicators, and data collection and dissemination, for the prevention of human rights violations and abuses. OHCHR had published a guide for measurement and implementation, 12 drawing on internationally agreed standards and encouraging adequate participatory processes for developing contextually relevant indicators. In the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, the indicators developed measured the situation at the level of the population groups concerned, or related to the process and structural indicators. He noted that for traditional datacollection surveys, national statistical offices often did not have access to the most deprived persons, including homeless persons, undocumented migrants, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex persons. National human rights institutions and civil society organizations had a key role in providing links to those groups. 41. He stressed the importance of using already available data to reveal and measure discrimination and inequalities. National human rights institutions were not necessarily aware of existing data collected by national statistical offices, and vice versa. In its resolution 71/313, the General Assembly had recommended that national statistical systems explore ways to integrate new data sources into their systems to satisfy new data needs of the 2030 Agenda. A lack of robust information could reveal a lack of prevention efforts and could be a human rights indicator in itself. For example, on the eve of the revolution in Tunisia, there were still reports, in 2010, about progress in economic and social terms, whereas human rights mechanisms and civil society voices were showing a different picture, of exclusion, discrimination, censorship and lack of participation. OHCHR had issued guidance on a human rights-based approach to data, 13 focusing on issues of data disaggregation, to leave no one behind in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and beyond. 42. Mr. De Schutter pointed to several tools, such as the guiding principles on human rights impact assessments of trade and investment agreements (A/HRC/19/59/Add.5), the guiding principles on foreign debt and human rights (A/HRC/20/23) and the guiding principles on extreme poverty and human rights (A/HRC/21/39). He stressed that human rights impact assessments should not be confused with poverty reduction impact assessments; the former were based on the normative framework of human rights law, followed a participatory methodology and did not look just at macroeconomic indicators but also at the impacts on specific groups defined, for example, by gender, ethnicity and age. Human rights impact assessments should be an ongoing process, because not all human rights impacts of certain policies could be fully anticipated. The conclusion of trade and investment treaties should be preceded by human rights impact assessments, and the treaties’ impacts following implementation should be regularly assessed. The credibility and effectiveness of human rights impact assessments depended on independence, transparency, inclusive participation, expertise and funding, as well as on status which allowed them to have an impact on how trade programmes were implemented. 43. Mr. De Schutter stressed that human rights impact assessments should be scoped properly, so that it was clear which issues needed analysis. When positive impacts were traded off against negative impacts, such trade-offs should be discussed with all stakeholders and must not result in discriminatory outcomes or a deprivation of the 12 13 10 See www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/Human_rights_indicators_en.pdf. See www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/HRIndicators/GuidanceNoteonApproachtoData.pdf.