A/HRC/34/74 I. Introduction A. Background 1. The United Nations Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation in the Field of Human Rights, established by the Commission on Human Rights in its resolution 1987/38, receives voluntary contributions from Governments, organizations and individuals. The objective of the Fund is to provide financial support for technical cooperation aimed at building and strengthening national and regional institutions, legal frameworks and infrastructures that will have a positive long-term impact on the implementation of international human rights standards. 2. The Board of Trustees has been operational since 1993 and its members are appointed by the Secretary-General for a three-year renewable term. The mandate of the Board is to assist the Secretary-General in streamlining and rationalizing the working methods and procedures of the technical cooperation programme. It meets twice a year and reports on its work to the Secretary-General and the Human Rights Council. Its current members are Mariclaire Acosta Urquidi (Mexico), Christopher Sidoti (Australia), Lin Lim (Malaysia), Esi Sutherland-Addy (Ghana) and Ilze Brands Kehris (Latvia). The Board elected Mr. Sidoti as Chair from 30 June 2016 until 30 June 2017. B. Mandate 3. Throughout the period under review, the Board continued to provide advice on policy and strategic orientation of the technical cooperation components of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), notably through its continuing visits to field presences and discussions with all partners. This refocused approach, agreed upon by the Board of Trustees and presented in 2011 to Member States in the annual report of the Secretary-General to the Human Rights Council (A/HRC/16/66), has proved to be particularly useful and appreciated by the Office and its partners with whom Board members have met during its visits. 4. As constituent members also of the Board of Trustees for the Voluntary Fund for Financial and Technical Assistance in the Implementation of the Universal Periodic Review, the Board continued to provide OHCHR with policy guidance in order to maximize the effectiveness of technical assistance and financial support for States in implementing recommendations of the universal periodic review and other international mechanisms at the State level (see A/HRC/32/28). The Board was informed on the 29 projects supported in 2016 by the Voluntary Fund for Financial and Technical Assistance in the Implementation of the Universal Periodic Review to assist States in establishing and/or strengthening inter-institutional bodies, designing a plan of action for implementation and/or mainstreaming the recommendations made by international human rights mechanisms into national human rights plans of action, implementing key priority human rights recommendations contained in the said plan for implementation, as well as providing support in the context of common country assessments and United Nations Development Assistance Frameworks. The latter support was provided mainly by embedding universal periodic review focal points or advisers to the offices of Resident Coordinators in a number of States. 5. The Board supports the Office as it continues to build on the synergies and complementarities of the two funds, improving their coordination and cooperation, and thereby maximizing their impact. From experience observed in recent years, the Board considers that one area with great impact potential is the full integration of accepted 3