A/HRC/10/57 page 8 20. In the Asia region, the Office’s capacity to implement technical cooperation has been increasingly facilitated through the expansion of field presences, including the deployment of human rights advisers. There are currently four advisers in the region (in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka and Maldives (mandate completed in 2008)); the deployment of more advisers is currently being discussed. OHCHR also maintains two country offices (in Cambodia and Nepal), two components of peacekeeping missions (in Afghanistan and Timor-Leste) and two regional offices (in Bangkok and Suva) with plans for a third. 21. In addition to work with individual Member States and United Nations country teams, the Office works closely with several important regional partners, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Pacific Islands Forum, as well as the Asia-Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions. OHCHR also supports an overarching Asia-Pacific regional framework on the promotion and protection of human rights, which, in the absence of a regional human rights mechanism, brings together Member States from across the region. 22. With regard to the Europe, North America and Central Asia region, which covers the 56 member countries of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Office selects its priorities for capacity-building carefully, taking into account the very effective regional mechanisms already covering Europe and the strong civil society actors active in quite a number of countries. In terms of fieldwork, one major shift in focus within the Office has been away from the Balkans (with the exception of Kosovo), where the Office was heavily engaged in recent years, to Central Asia, where work has been growing in the past two years and where a regional office has been established in Kyrgyzstan. The Office is also represented by human rights advisers to the United Nations country teams in the Russian Federation and the south Caucasus, which are major areas for priority involvement. The Office is planning the establishment of a regional office in Brussels to facilitate relations with the institutions of the European Union. 23. Throughout the region, the Office has been emphasizing the placing of human rights advisers, including national ones, in United Nations country teams, as well as, to the extent possible, working with country teams in countries where OHCHR has no presence. The Office’s technical assistance and policy advocacy work in the region focuses on ongoing issues of concern, which often involve impunity and range from weak institutions - judiciary and legislature, in particular - to women’s rights, restrictions on freedom of expression and association, human rights in the fight against terrorism, racism and xenophobia, the treatment of asylum-seekers, irregular migrants and Roma, as well as economic and social rights, including poverty and the right to housing. 24. In Latin America, OHCHR technical cooperation activities are mainly implemented through its presences in the region, including the regional office for Latin America (Panama), its four country offices (Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico), two human rights advisers (Ecuador and Nicaragua), and the human rights component in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti. 25. The Office however also engages with countries with no presence, for example by providing assistance for the inclusion of a human rights-based approach within the social cohesion programme developed by the Department of Political Affairs and the United Nations Development Programme for the English-speaking Caribbean, a priority in 2009.

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