A/HRC/10/24 page 5 I. INTRODUCTION 1. Annual meetings of special rapporteurs/representatives, experts and chairpersons of working groups of the special procedures of the Commission on Human Rights and the Human Rights Council have been organized since 1994. The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights on 25 June 1993, underlined the importance of preserving and strengthening the system of special procedures and specified that the procedures and mechanisms should be enabled to harmonize and rationalize their work through periodic meetings (A/CONF.157/24 (part II), para. 95). 2. The fifteenth annual meeting of special procedures was held in Geneva from 23 to 27 June 2008. Participants had before them a provisional annotated agenda and a series of documents prepared by mandate-holders, the Secretariat and other sources. 3. During the meeting, mandate-holders held exchanges of views with the Deputy High Commissioner, the former President of the Council, the current President and members of the Council Bureau. Participants also met with representatives of non-governmental organizations and national human rights institutions, and held a joint meeting with participants of the twentieth meeting of persons chairing the human rights treaty bodies. II. ORGANIZATION OF WORK 4. The meeting was opened by the Chairperson of the fourteenth annual meeting and Chairperson of the Coordination Committee of Special Procedures, Gay McDougall. The outgoing Chairperson of the Committee gave an explanation of the process of nominations to the Committee that was undertaken by e-mail in advance of the meeting. 5. Participants elected Asma Jahangir Chairperson of the fifteenth annual meeting and of the Committee, and Olivier de Schutter Rapporteur of the meeting and member of the Committee. The three remaining members elected by consensus on 26 June were Cephas Lumina, Maria Magdalena Sepúlveda and Gulnara Shahinian. The former Chairperson will be an ex-officio member of the Committee. 6. Meeting participants expressed deep appreciation for the work carried out throughout the year by the outgoing Chairperson and the other members of the Committee, in particular in connection with the process of review of mandates conducted by the Council and the selection of new mandate-holders. The outgoing Chairperson also thanked the Special Procedures Division for its support for the Committee and for keeping mandate-holders informed about Council developments throughout the year. Mandate-holders approved the agenda as revised. 7. A number of parallel events were organized outside the formal agenda of the meeting, and were attended by several mandate-holders. They included discussions on child rights perspectives and working with the media. Mandate-holders held individual meetings with the Chief of the Travel Unit of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).