A/HRC/44/50 (h) Round of meetings with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and civil society organizations, held in Washington, D.C., from 10 to 13 December 2019; (i) Retreat on the topic of general comment No. 37 of the Human Rights Committee, held in Glion sur Montreux, Switzerland, on 6 and 7 March 2020. III. Taking stock A. Establishment of the mandate 11. The mandate of the Special Rapporteur was established on 30 September 2010 by the Human Rights Council during its fifteenth session. According to Council resolution 15/21, the mandate is tasked with the promotion and protection of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association worldwide. To fulfil its functions, the Special Rapporteur has drawn on a variety of tools, which include conducting country visits, responding to individual complaints, providing technical assistance to governments, conducting studies and producing thematic reports, and engaging in public outreach. 12. In establishing the mandate, while the Council recognized the importance of these rights in and of themselves, it also recognized that they provided to individuals opportunities to exercise other human rights and democratic governance. 1 Such interrelatedness and interdependence make these rights valuable indicators of a State’s respect for the enjoyment of many other human rights and its support for democratic values. 2 13. The creation of the Special Rapporteur’s mandate responded to concerns about a worrying trend of closing civic space by means of laws and practices that unduly restrict civil society’s environment as well as an increase in threats to the enjoyment of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association. After years of gradual but steady democratization and strengthening of the civil society sector in many countries around the world, restrictive laws and practices specifically directed against the promotion of democracy and human rights groups had begun to appear. A project on defending civil society, launched in 2007 by international civil society organizations, mapped these new threats and urged the international community to take action and build solidarity to protect civil society against them.3 Within the Human Rights Council, a growing number of countries were working in concert to strengthen the international community’s response to those attacks. Unfortunately, however, the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association were the only fundamental freedoms defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that did not enjoy specific attention from the United Nations human rights machinery. That gap limited the capacity of the international community, and the Council in particular, to effectively address the challenges identified. 14. The adoption of Council resolution 15/21 was indicative of the broad support these freedoms enjoy, and it demonstrated that a large number of States from different regions of the world recognized the need to increase efforts to protect and enhance space for civic engagement. While doing so, the resolution reaffirmed a core set of principles protecting these fundamental freedoms, including that: (a) Rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association are essential components of democracy, and of human rights more generally; (b) Rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association belong to everyone, without discrimination, including persons espousing minority or dissenting views or beliefs, human rights defenders, trade unionists and others, including migrants; 1 2 3 (c) No one may be compelled to belong to an association; (d) These rights deserve special protection in the context of elections; Human Rights Council resolution 15/21. A/HRC/20/27, para. 12. International Centre for Not-For-Profit Law and World Movement for Democracy. “Defending civil society”, February 2008. Available at http://ecnl.org/dindocuments/244_ICNLWMD_Defending_CS.pdf. 5