A/HRC/30/10 8. In 2011, the Commission for Protection against Discrimination and the Ombudsman were accorded “B” status by the International Coordinating Committee of National Human Rights Institutions. The Ombudsman had been acting as a national preventive mechanism after the recent amendments to the Ombudsman Act. 9. Since 2011, the National Council for Cooperation on Ethnic and Integration Issues, a government consultative body, has been coordinating and monitoring the implementation of the National Action Plan for the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005–2015. 10. The delegation stated that the recommendations of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had been taken into consideration during the drafting of the Electoral Codes, which came into force in 2014. 11. The delegation stated that the Government paid special attention to all those recommendations that called for the reform of the judiciary as it considered judicial reform an important area for the protection of human rights. The recommendations of the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers had been taken into consideration during the drafting of the 2012 amendments to the Judicial System Act. The updated strategy for continuing the reform of the judiciary, which was adopted in 2015, set the goal to modernize the judiciary and to complete the reform within the following seven years. The key priority of the reform was to provide full guarantees for the independence of the judiciary and ensure its effective functioning. 12. Progress was documented in setting up a mechanism for the compensation of those whose human rights had been violated. The Government had established a procedure for compensating citizens and legal entities for damages resulting from unreasonable delays in civil, administrative and criminal procedures. The National Assembly tasked the Government to submit an annual report on the implementation of the decisions of the European Court on Human Rights against Bulgaria. In 2014, the Government adopted a decision for a one-time payment of compensation to all individual complaints for which damages were recommended by the United Nations human rights treaty bodies. In 2015 the National Coordination Mechanism on Human Rights approved a legal mechanism for financial compensation following the recommendations of the treaty bodies on individual complaints. 13. During the reporting period, Bulgaria acceded to a number of international human rights instruments, including the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. The delegation expressed the commitment of Bulgaria to ratifying the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. Bulgaria had presented its reports to the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It had also issued a standing invitation to all special procedures mandate holders of the Human Rights Council. 14. In the reporting period, Bulgaria had achieved progress in enhancing the national capacity for the promotion and protection of human rights. The human rights situation had improved, though certain areas required further efforts. Having that in mind, the National Coordination Mechanism on Human Rights had approved national human rights priorities that included the protection of the rights of the child, persons with disabilities and of migrants and refugees, enhancement of gender equality, the promotion of ethnic and religious tolerance and the effective integration of Roma. 15. The delegation expressed its gratitude to all those delegations that had submitted advance questions and provided the responses to those questions. In response to the influx of refugees in 2013, the Government had improved the living conditions of those in need of 4