A/HRC/44/19 Afghanistan, Argentina, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Peru, Samoa and Uruguay. Based on a request from the Government of Mongolia (where OHCHR does not have a field presence), a comprehensive one-and-a-half-year project was developed and implemented throughout 2019. 29. Using Voluntary Fund support, the OHCHR Country Office in Cambodia enhanced the capacity of local authorities to implement the complex and lengthy communal land titling process. In total, OHCHR Cambodia helped 2,000 indigenous persons to progress towards the legal recognition of their land by mitigating the risk of eviction and land grabbing. Indigenous communities were consulted and kept informed by OHCHR before and during each step of the communal land registration process. The OHCHR Country Office emphasized the importance of gender parity on the committees selected by indigenous communities for the consultations; as a result, 40 to 55 per cent of the representatives on the committees were female. 30. The OHCHR Country Office in Cambodia also provided the local authorities with information on how to manage the process: in addition to providing technical support during the registration processes, the Country Office published a manual on the three-step communal land titling process to assist local authorities and indigenous communities. The manual was widely disseminated and used extensively in training local authorities in charge of communal land titling at the provincial level. In 2019, 61 participants from the Ministry of Rural Development, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction, along with several of their provincial departments, gained knowledge on intellectual property rights and communal land titling during a threeday training organized by OHCHR in partnership with those ministries. 31. The OHCHR Country Office also worked with the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples to advocate for the simplification of the lengthy and complex communal land titling process. It has continued its advocacy for the simplification of the process with the World Bank, which announced that it would support communal land titling registration in 2020. 32. In Mongolia, OHCHR provided technical cooperation with support from the Voluntary Fund to assist the country in implementing some of the key thematic recommendations from its second cycle review, including the establishment of a national preventive mechanism to combat torture; the adoption of a national action plan on business and human rights; the adoption of a law on the protection of human rights defenders; the setting up of a national recommendations tracking database; and the relaunch of the Free and Equal Campaign. The presence of a Human Rights Adviser in the country has been critical in supporting implementation of a number of these activities. 33. With a view to establishing a national preventive mechanism, OHCHR, in close collaboration with the Government of Mongolia, held a consultative meeting to identify a national preventive mechanism in line with the requirements of the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, during which a member of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment provided expert advice. As a result, the parliament adopted the Revised Law on the National Human Rights Commission of Mongolia, which designates the National Human Rights Commission as the national preventive mechanism, with an independent mandate and functions from that of the Commission. 34. In addition, OHCHR organized a national multi-stakeholder consultation on the adoption of the national action plan on business and human rights, during which the Chair of the Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises provided specific expert advice. Given the need to further raise awareness on this issue, the Government of Mongolia will continue to work towards the adoption of a national action plan with the active participation of all stakeholders, including the business community, workers’ organizations and civil society. 35. In relation to a bill on human rights defenders, OHCHR, in collaboration with the Government and the National Human Rights Commission of Mongolia, organized a consultative meeting on the legal protection of human rights defenders, during which the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders provided expert advice with 7