A/HRC/40/18 United Nations General Assembly Distr.: General 26 December 2018 Original: English Human Rights Council Fortieth session 25 February–22 March 2019 Agenda item 2 Annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and reports of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Secretary-General Conclusions and recommendations of special procedures Report of the Secretary-General 1. The Human Rights Council, in its decision 2/102, requested the Secretary-General and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to continue their activities in accordance with all previous decisions adopted by the Commission on Human Rights and to update the relevant reports and studies. 2. The Commission on Human Rights, in its resolution 2004/76, requested the Secretary-General to issue annually conclusions and recommendations of the special procedures so as to enable further discussion of their implementation. The Commission also requested the High Commissioner to continue to prepare a comprehensive and regularly updated electronic compilation of recommendations made by the special procedures by country, where such did not yet exist. In paragraph 29 of the annex to its resolution 65/281, the General Assembly provided that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) would continue to maintain information on special procedures in a comprehensive and easily accessible manner. 3. The Secretary-General draws the attention of the Human Rights Council to the conclusions and recommendations included in annual reports and the relevant addenda thereto, submitted by the special procedures to the Council in 2018 at its thirty-seventh, thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth sessions.1 4. In 2018, special procedure mandate holders presented 133 reports to the Human Rights Council. They also presented 44 reports to the General Assembly. The recommendations of special procedures are also available, searchable by country, in the Universal Human Rights Index. 5. As illustrated by the list of themes addressed by special procedure mandate holders in their reports in 2018 (see annex), a variety of issues has been examined, and States and other stakeholders have been provided with advice on promoting and protecting human rights at the national, regional and international levels. In producing their reports, mandate holders have made specific recommendations that have been addressed not only to States 1 Available at www.ohchr.org. 7 GE.18-22676(E) 