A/HRC/15/38 information received on the applicants, the Board of Trustees would make recommendations for the approval of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on behalf of the Secretary-General on the basis of this information. 46. Bearing in mind its past practices, it is likely that the Board of Trustees would select indigenous representatives with a specialized profile to attend human rights treaty bodies, focusing on indigenous representatives with knowledge of the United Nations system, international human rights law and the mandate of treaty bodies. As has been the practice in the past, the Board of Trustees of the Fund could select the candidates on the basis of an application form that each candidate and his/her sponsoring organization will have to submit, but it is likely that the content of the said form would need to be revisited in the light of the expanded mandate, so as to obtain information on such issues as past attendance of sessions of treaty bodies and, in general, experience in working with the treaty body system. 47. The number of grantees would depend on the countries under discussion at a given session. Treaty bodies review between 4 and 18 country reports during one session, and not all of them will necessarily have indigenous peoples. Furthermore, only those representatives of communities and organizations that work on the rights contained in the specific convention at issue would be selected. Therefore, the number of beneficiaries attending these sessions would be significantly lower that the number of beneficiaries at the Expert Mechanism and the Permanent Forum. 48. It is likely that the inclusion of treaty bodies in the mandate of the Fund would increase the need for intersessional consultations. The methodology could be built on the intersessional procedures already being used by the Board, according to which the information prepared and analysed by the Fund’s secretariat is sent to all Board members for their consideration and approval in an electronic form. If necessary, the secretariat may convene an intersessional meeting using videoconference and webcasting. XI. Proposed expansion of the mandate to cover sessions of the Human Rights Council 49. While the following paragraphs describe the present situation and modalities as regards indigenous participation in the Human Rights Council, it is important to recall at the outset that the Human Rights Council is, pursuant to General Assembly resolution 60/251 of 15 March 2006, undertaking a review of its work and functioning, the results of which may impact on some of the relevant modalities. 50. At present, the Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Populations supports participation of indigenous peoples in the overall context of the Human Rights Council by funding their participation in the sessions of the Expert Mechanism, which is a subsidiary body of the Council. Unlike the sessions of the Council, the sessions of the Expert Mechanism are open to indigenous organizations without Economic and Social Council consultative status and many of the beneficiaries of the Fund are from such organizations. The proposal made to the Human Rights Council by the Expert Mechanism at its first and second session would involve expanding the mandate of the Fund so that it could support participation not only in the Expert Mechanism but also in the sessions of the Human Rights Council. 51. Indigenous persons representing NGOs with ECOSOC consultative status can submit written statements; deliver oral statements and host parallel events during the sessions of the Human Rights Council, and a number of them have contributed to the regular sessions of the Council, including its discussions on the reports of the Expert Mechanism and the Special Rapporteur, as well as meetings on the universal period review. In addition to contributing to the formal sessions, indigenous representatives often use these 11