A/HRC/40/78 I. Introduction A. Background 1. The United Nations Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation in the Field of Human Rights, established by the Commission on Human Rights in its resolution 1987/38, receives voluntary contributions from Governments, organizations and individuals. The objective of the Fund is to provide financial support for technical cooperation aimed at building and strengthening national and regional institutions, legal frameworks and infrastructures that will have positive long-term impacts on the implementation of international human rights standards. 2. The Board of Trustees has been operational since 1993 and its members are appointed by the Secretary-General for a three-year term, renewable once. The mandate of the Board is to assist the Secretary-General in rationalizing and improving the technical cooperation programme. It meets twice a year and reports on its work to the SecretaryGeneral and the Human Rights Council. Its current members are Morten Kjaerum (Denmark), Lin Lim (Malaysia), Esi Sutherland-Addy (Ghana), Valeriya Lutkovska (Ukraine) and Carmen Rosa Villa (Peru). Ms. Villa was nominated in July 2018 to replace the seat vacated by Mariclaire Acosta (Mexico). At its forty-sixth session, the Board elected Morten Kjaerum as Chair and his mandate will run until 30 October 2019. The Board decided to extend the period of time each member will act as Chair on a rotational basis to cover at least two sessions of the Board and a Human Rights Council oral update. B. Mandate 3. The refocused approach, agreed upon by the Board of Trustees and presented in 2011 to Member States in the annual report of the Secretary-General to the Human Rights Council (A/HRC/16/66), continues to be appreciated by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and its partners. 4. The visits to field presences through the organization of one of the Board’s annual sessions in a country or region where OHCHR is present, and the discussions with all partners on the ground has continued to strengthen the capacity of the Board to provide strategic advice. Over the last six years the Board has visited at least one type of field presence in every region of the world and observed how OHCHR continues to maximize the impact of its relatively limited resources, which are constantly overstretched. 5. As members also of the Board of Trustees of the Voluntary Fund for Financial and Technical Assistance in the Implementation of the Universal Periodic Review, the Board has continued to offer policy guidance in order to maximize the effectiveness of the technical assistance and financial support available to States in implementing the recommendations arising from the universal periodic review and other international mechanisms. 6. Following the advice of the Board, OHCHR continues to strengthen the strategic use of the resources under the two voluntary funds to maximize their impact, especially in the areas of capacity-building and advisory services on the ground. Its efforts to enhance the complementarities of the two voluntary funds in support of fuller and more effective integration of recommendations as an integral part of United Nations programme tools on the ground are very much encouraged by the Board and welcomed by all Resident Coordinators with whom the Board has met. The Board is of the view that the technical support provided over the last five years in establishing e-tools for systematizing recommendations and follow-up actions are crucial to ensuring sustained, coherent and effective in-country support for implementation of those recommendations. 7. Throughout 2018, the Board had a number of opportunities to continue engaging with OHCHR and its partners on the ground on the relevance of the technical cooperation programmes in the context of its new programme for the period 2018–2021. In particular, 2