A/HRC/18/41 32. Participants reiterated points of agreement adopted at the eleventh inter-committee meeting and at the seventeenth annual meeting of special procedures mandate holders1 and agreed that the next joint meeting should focus on substantive issues and specific themes to be agreed upon by the two Chairs prior to the meeting. B. Exchange of views with States 33. Opening the exchange of views, the Chair of the Coordination Committee underlined the importance of mandate holders and of States maintaining open and constructive dialogue in relation to their common objectives of ensuring human rights protection at the national level. Appreciation was extended to the former President of the Human Rights Council and to the facilitator of the Council review segment on special procedures for allowing the Committee to contribute actively to the review process on behalf of mandate holders. 34. States welcomed the opportunity to meet with mandate holders and looked forward to enhanced interaction, emphasizing the importance of the integrity, impartiality and independence of special procedures. It was observed that the outcome of the Human Rights Council review reaffirmed these principles and the obligation of States to cooperate with special procedures. Mandate holders were urged to coordinate their visit requests and to ensure that their recommendations were practical, concrete and realistic, and took into account the context of the State concerned. More resources had to be provided from the regular budget to support special procedures, and transparency in relation to extrabudgetary and non-United Nations resources should be the guiding principle; special procedures were urged to be proactive in this context. Ways to enhance interactive dialogues with mandate holders during the Council sessions were discussed, and more informal interaction with States, such as through side events and other imaginative formats, was encouraged, including, if possible, with States recently visited. It was noted that multiple visit requests and follow-up to the recommendations of special procedures sometimes posed a challenge for States, particularly as there were also requirements to follow up on the recommendations of the universal periodic review and treaty bodies. Harmonization and synchronization of all recommendations were encouraged, and special procedures were urged to provide recommendations for technical assistance and capacitybuilding. It was noted that special procedures could track the implementation of treaty body and universal periodic review recommendations. They also had a role to play in the second round of the review, which would be diluted if the compilation report failed to include developments reported by mandate holders. States also called for improved follow-up to country visits; a suggestion was made that thematic reports might contain a section on this. Consistency across mandates in relation to communications should be an objective, and mandate holders were asked to strengthen efforts to verify information in respect of these and to take into account the constraints that some States faced in responding by deadlines. 35. Mandate holders raised concerns regarding the lack of adequate regular budgetary support for their work and noted that the creation of additional mandates by the Human Rights Council without additional and sufficient resources posed significant challenges to the system. While regular budgetary funding remains inadequate, mandate holders noted that they would continue to rely upon voluntary extra-budgetary support. There was agreement that transparency should apply to all such support and that it should be distributed among mandates as equitably as possible, taking into account their requirements. 36. The importance of building on the outcome of the Human Rights Council review as a basis for further joint efforts to strengthen the work of the Council was underlined. The 1 See A/HRC/15/44 and A/65/190. 11