14.2 Regional and international workshops Some of the sharing of experience will take place in regional and international workshops devoted wholly or in part to consideration of national action plans. Such meetings have already taken place in New Delhi, Bangkok, Dakar and Quito, and further meetings are planned. Those who participated in these meetings included not only representatives of countries that had instituted national plans but also representatives of governments, OHCHR and other United Nations bodies, national human rights institutions and NGOs. Such workshops play an important role in spreading awareness internationally of the national action plan concept, in sharing experience and in identifying best practice. The workshops have, in turn, developed useful suggestions regarding the possible structure and content of national plans and how further work on the idea might be managed. Countries that have developed national plans should stand ready to contribute to such workshops. 14.3 The United Nations Work on national plans has flowed from and been sustained by activity at the United Nations. This will continue as more and more countries consider national plans as a vehicle for human rights improvements and look to the world body and its affiliates for guidance and assistance. Countries that have experience with national plans can contribute in various ways to United Nations expertise on the subject. They can provide information on their own plans to OHCHR, both the texts of the plans and information on evaluations and revisions. They can participate in debates on the issue, for example at the annual sessions of the Commission on Human Rights, and provide input to relevant resolutions of the Commission and other human rights bodies that address national human rights action plans. The mechanism of national plans can thus be carried forward in a consistent and cooperative way so that the widest possible number of countries, organizations and individuals can benefit from the concept. 14.4 Technical cooperation and OHCHR The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has provided advice and other assistance for the development of several of the national human rights action plans that have been adopted so far. The assistance may have been provided under a larger comprehensive national technical cooperation project or as a focused single activity. In a number of cases, the assistance was provided through the “Human Rights Strengthening” (HURIST) joint OHCHR/UNDP programme (see http://www.unhchr.ch/development/hurist.html). Lessons learned from those plans will be made public on the OHCHR web site and in due course incorporated in a revision of this Handbook. An independent review of the HURIST programme’s first two years of operation – published in August 2001 (http://www.ohchr.org/development/huristreview.doc) – raised a question regarding the compatibility of national human rights action plans with the imperative of “mainstreaming” human rights as a cross-cutting concern within national-level development policy and planning activities. This concern is reflected in the introductory section of this Handbook (section 1.3) and elaborated in 107