A/HRC/45/42 94. Thematic and country reports by special procedure mandate holders regularly highlight the key role that national human rights institutions play in protecting and promoting human rights.6 3. Open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights 95. In October 2019, four national human rights institutions participated, through written submissions and oral interventions, in the fifth session of the open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights. B. United Nations treaty bodies 96. OHCHR continued to support the engagement of national human rights institutions with United Nations treaty bodies. OHCHR, as the secretariat of the treaty bodies, and the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions in Geneva liaised with national human rights institutions of States that would be reviewed to encourage them to provide written or oral information and/or to attend sessions of the treaty bodies. Furthermore, the National Institutions and Regional Mechanisms Section of OHCHR disseminated relevant recommendations and concluding observations of treaty bodies to national institutions. 97. During the reporting period, the treaty bodies reviewed 89 States parties that had a national human rights institution. Fifty-eight institutions submitted information and six provided briefings to the treaty bodies (see annex III). 98. Compared with the previous reporting period, there was an increase of 5.5 per cent in the submission of information by national human rights institutions to treaty bodies and a decrease of 31.6 per cent in the number of briefings, partly due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. 99. The treaty bodies continued to provide national human rights institutions with information notes, advice and tools to facilitate their effective engagement, and invited representatives of those institutions to their meetings. 100. During the period under review, the Committee against Torture met with 13 national human rights institutions, which submitted substantive reports and/or briefed it. Furthermore, OHCHR organized several training sessions, during which representatives from nine national human rights institutions were briefed on the treaty body reporting process and follow-up. C. Other United Nations mechanisms and processes 101. During the period under review, national human rights institutions engaged in activities of the United Nations Network on Migration, including its annual meeting, in December 2019,7 as members of the United Nations Network working groups and as active stakeholders in the implementation, follow-up and review of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration at the country level. 6 7 14 See, for example, the report submitted to the General Assembly at its seventy-fourth session by the Working Group on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination on the gendered human rights impacts of private military and security companies (A/74/244) contains a recommendation directed at several stakeholders, including national human rights institutions. The national human rights institutions of Chile and the Philippines attended the annual meeting, on behalf of the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institution task force on migration. A representative from the Global Alliance also attended the meeting.