A/HRC/39/41 6. During the reporting period, successive Presidents of the Human Rights Council used their good offices through bilateral meetings or in writing in 2017 and 2018 to handle eight cases of reprisals related to participation in sessions of the Council. Those cases included travel bans, detention and confiscation of a passport, arrest, interrogation and imprisonment in the home country following participation in Council sessions and intimidation during parallel side events of the Council by representatives of a State. 7. The High Commissioner for Human Rights addressed in strong terms the issue of reprisals brought to bear by State officials on several occasions, in particular in his opening statement to the thirty-sixth session of the Human Rights Council on 11 September 2017 2 and on 18 June 2018 to its thirty-eighth session.3 On numerous occasions, he has drawn attention to new and evolving policies and legislation that aim to restrict the operations of civil society, including those that selectively place obstacles in the way of international advocacy efforts by NGOs on particular issues. They include those that would limit or deny the foreign funding that organizations use to submit research and travel to United Nations meetings. 8. The Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, the senior official designated to lead efforts within the United Nations system to address intimidation and reprisals, has continued his high-level engagement with States, in particular on patterns and concerning urgent cases, and has undertaken activities to consult directly with victims and civil society organizations on the work of the United Nations in addressing reprisals. Apart from meetings in New York and Geneva, he engaged with participants from around the world at the 2017 Dublin Platform for Human Rights Defenders hosted by Front Line Defenders, 4 with Asian defenders from 16 countries at a regional consultation in Bangkok organized by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in May 2018 5 and at a human rights defender security platform for Central Asia in Bishkek.6 9. The Assistant Secretary-General addressed specific situations and individual cases with Member States in intergovernmental forums and through quiet diplomacy with concerned Governments, including with Permanent Representatives to the United Nations and during field missions. He engaged with the President of the Human Rights Council, the Chair of the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations, special procedures mandate holders, including their Coordination Committee, treaty bodies, Special Representatives of the Secretary-General and Resident Coordinators, representatives of the World Bank, heads of human rights field presences and focal points in various United Nations organizations at Headquarters and in the field. He has also engaged with the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions on the specific targeting of national institutions in relation to their work with the United Nations. 10. On 18 April 2018, at the seventeenth session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the Assistant Secretary-General emphasized the widespread intimidation of and reprisals taken against indigenous peoples, including those who cooperated with the United Nations. 7 The Permanent Forum requested the SecretaryGeneral, through the Assistant Secretary-General and in consultation with other relevant United Nations mechanisms, to report to the Forum at its eighteenth session in 2019 on trends related to intimidation and reprisals against indigenous peoples who seek to engage with the United Nations (see E/2018/43-E/C.19/2018/11, para. 14). 11. In the report on the twenty-fourth annual meeting of special rapporteurs/ representatives, independent experts and chairs of working groups of the special procedures of the Human Rights Council, the special procedures mandate holders noted various measures taken to respond to intimidation and reprisals, which were observed to have 2 3 4 5 6 7 4 Available from www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22041. Available from www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx? NewsID=23206&LangID=E. See ww.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?LangID=E&NewsID=22251. See www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23106&LangID=E. See www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23109&LangID=E. See www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22955&LangID=E.