A/HRC/15/38 IX. Capacity-building and training 35. To maximize the Fund’s impact and the participation of indigenous representatives at the sessions, the Secretariat of the Fund organizes, on the first day of each session, an information meeting about the Fund and the technical aspects related to the beneficiaries’ participation in the session at issue. The secretariat also assists grantees with specific issues over the course of the sessions. 36. Many of the indigenous representatives attending United Nations meetings have expressed the wish to discuss their specific situations and express their concerns, and it is therefore important that they are provided with adequate information regarding the appropriate venues and mechanisms designed for that purpose. In this respect, a number of participants have appreciated the opportunity to meet with the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people and, in some cases, other special procedure mandate holders during the sessions of the Expert Mechanism and the Permanent Forum and they have also requested further information on the use of treaty bodies and other relevant human rights mechanisms. 37. In view of the above-mentioned interest, the Board of Trustees has recommended that the initial information sessions be complemented with training sessions, and a small sum was allocated for this purpose from the Fund in 2010. Such training has been pursued in connection with the partnership between OHCHR and Indigenous Peoples’ Centre for Documentation, Research and Information. The first training course took place at the 2010 session of the Permanent Forum. Expert indigenous representatives delivered the training sessions on the United Nations mandates devoted to indigenous peoples and other relevant mechanisms, including the universal periodical review. The next training of this kind will take place in the context of the third session of the Expert Mechanism in July 2010. X. Proposed expansion of the mandate to cover sessions of the treaty bodies 38. The Expert Mechanism proposed at its first and second sessions that the Human Rights Council suggests to the General Assembly to broaden the mandate of the Fund to help indigenous peoples to participate in the sessions of the Human Rights Council and human rights treaty bodies. As regards human rights treaty bodies,1 they all address issues that relate to indigenous peoples and are therefore to be considered in this context. 39. In several cases, indigenous representatives have already worked actively with treaty bodies by providing information on the implementation of specific rights at the domestic level and helping to promote the implementation of treaty bodies’ recommendations. Participation of indigenous peoples in the treaty bodies system can be done in various ways, and only some of them require travel to sessions. Indigenous peoples can, for example, submit alternative reports to assist various committees in their formulation of their concluding observations on State party reports; present information to the committees for the elaboration of general comments that would include references to indigenous questions; contribute to the thematic discussions that certain committees organize; submit individual 1 Human Rights Committee; Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination; Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women; Committee against Torture; Committee on the Rights of the Child; Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families; and Committee on the Right of Persons with Disabilities. 9