A/72/165 85. She has also seized opportunities to raise awareness of the work of the Forum outside Geneva. In 2013, she travelled to Banjul to attend the fifty -third ordinary session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Among other activities, she held a public side event with the participation of a commissioner, Soyata Maiga, the Chair of the fifth session of the Forum. The side event was an opportunity to brief participants on the work of the mandate holder and the Forum and to share information relating to minorities in African human rights mechanisms. In 2016, while reporting to the General Assembly, the Special Rapporteur convened a consultative session in New York, which served as an opportunity to discuss the draft recommendations of the Forum ahead of its session, raise awareness of its work outside Geneva and engage with relevant stakeholders in New York. 86. The Special Rapporteur considers that enhanced financial support for the Forum is needed to guarantee its long-term functioning and ensure that it can fulfil its role. She thanks Austria for its generous support since the outset, as well as Hungary and the Russian Federation for their contributions, and encourages other States to contribute financially to the Forum to ensure its sustainability and progress. Increased financial resources will also enable the Forum to consider holding meetings in the various regions so that minorities and non -governmental organizations that cannot afford to travel to Geneva will be able to contribute to the Forum’s deliberations in their respective localities. The extension of the current two-day session could also be considered to allow more participants to take the floor and broaden the scope of the discussions. 87. The year 2017 marks the tenth anniversary of the establishment of th e Forum. The Special Rapporteur considers it to be an ideal opportunity to foster ownership of the Forum’s agenda by minorities themselves, encourage focused and constructive participation of States and minority representatives, strengthen the engagement of other United Nations agencies in the Forum and promote more interactive dialogue and discussion during the sessions of the Forum in a respectful and constructive spirit. VI. Research on minority issues in the second cycle of the universal periodic review process 88. The Special Rapporteur has conducted research analysing all minority -related recommendations of the second cycle of the universal periodic review process. 3 The main findings are summarized in the present section. As in the previous report on the first cycle, the research is based entirely on the statistics and database of UPR Info. 4 The Special Rapporteur notes that, at the time of writing of the present report, the recommendations made at the twenty-sixth session of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review had not been made part of the overall electronic database; all the statistics and data below reflect, therefore, the outcomes of the thirteenth to twenty-fifth sessions. 5 __________________ 3 4 5 17-12138 The Special Rapporteur thanks the members of the Human Rights Project at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy for their important work on this issue and the team at UPR Info for their assistance and collaboration. Available from www.upr-info.org. According to the Special Rapporteur’s assessment, during the twenty -sixth session, 10 Member States (Haiti, Iceland, Lithuania, Republic of Moldova, South Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Timor-Leste, Uganda, Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) and Zimbabwe) received 80 recommendations regarding minorities, vulnerable groups, marginalized groups and religious groups, which will change the final statistics and charts. 19/22