A/HRC/43/37 sector and the activities of private and military companies) and for the advancement of specific rights (the rights to development, education and peace, democratic rights and those dependent on the rule of law). They constitute platforms for dialogue among the various stakeholders and for sharing good practices. They also contribute to the development and dissemination of new standards (e.g., the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the Declaration on the Right to Development, the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, the Complementary Standards to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the United Nations declaration on human rights education and training, the Declaration on the Right to Peace and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas). 22. The preventive potential of forums and open-ended intergovernmental working groups would undoubtedly be enhanced through a consistent approach to their work on prevention. Prevention could also be a specific topic for discussion, as in the 2018 session of the Forum on Business and Human Rights devoted to the preventive impact of due diligence in the business sector. D. Special procedures 23. Of the 56 special procedures, 16 have a mandate with a specific dimension on prevention, which are all thematic, not country-specific, special procedures. Notwithstanding this fact, all special procedures have the potential to contribute to prevention in two ways. First, they can play a role in detecting and highlighting emerging human rights issues and sometimes crises through country visits, 3 public statements, urgent appeals and communications. Second, they also have the potential to reach a variety of national stakeholders and contribute to more upstream prevention through consultations conducted in the preparation of their reports and recommendations. 24. Some special procedures have focused their work on prevention and have released reports on this specific topic, including the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, and the Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence. But this is far from the norm. Saying that everything special procedures do is preventive in nature fails to take full advantage of the potential of these mechanisms, which would involve the adoption of an explicitly preventive approach, including, for example, articulating prevention plans with short, medium and long-term goals and corresponding milestones. 25. The preventive potential of special procedures is also undermined by the frequent time lag between mandate holders’ country visits and discussion of their reports by the Council. This problem could be mitigated by inviting mandate holders to sessions of the Council during country briefings, as was done with the Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence to discuss the situation in Sri Lanka. Early warning information and the concerns raised by mandate holders during each calendar year could also be flagged in the annual reports on special procedures presented to the Council. 26. Greater attention should be placed on the follow-up to recommendations of the special procedures. Practices developed by some mandate holders, such as sending a letter to the Government or a questionnaire three years after a country visit, should be systematized. Joint reports by several mandate holders also provide useful opportunities. The recommendations made by special procedures could also be consolidated and transmitted to the Council by the Chair of the Coordination Committee, as well as to other United Nations entities. Progress on follow-up to priority recommendations could be included as a standing agenda item for the annual meetings of special procedures. Key findings could then be shared with the Council, which should also envisage allocating more time under agenda item 5 for States to share information on the measures taken to implement the recommendations of special procedures. The new OHCHR website, which 3 6 On average, special procedure mandate holders conduct approximately 60 to 80 country visits each year.