A/RES/53/148 Page 3 5. Invites all Governments to continue to support the activities of the Office of the High Commissioner in the field of technical cooperation, with a view to further strengthening regional cooperation and regional arrangements for the promotion and protection of human rights; 6. Reiterates the recommendation of the World Conference on Human Rights that human rights officers be assigned if and when necessary to regional offices of the United Nations for the purpose of disseminating information and offering training and other technical assistance in the field of human rights upon the request of the Member States concerned, and in this regard calls upon the Office of the High Commissioner also to disseminate information regarding regional arrangements which exist in different parts of the world; 7. Requests the Secretary-General, as foreseen in programme 19 (Human rights) of the medium-term plan for the period 1998–2001, to continue to strengthen exchanges between the United Nations and regional intergovernmental organizations dealing with human rights; 8. Welcomes the growing exchanges between the Office of the High Commissioner and regional intergovernmental organizations, as well as the growing exchanges between the bodies created by the United Nations in accordance with the treaties dealing with human rights and relevant regional organizations and bodies such as the Council of Europe and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights; 9. Also welcomes the recent adoption by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights5 on the establishment of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights; 10. Invites States in areas where regional arrangements in the field of human rights do not yet exist to consider concluding agreements with a view to the establishment within their respective regions of suitable regional machinery for the promotion and protection of human rights, and recognizes in this context that the annual intergovernmental workshop for the Asia-Pacific region, as stated during the sixth Workshop on Regional Arrangements for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in the Asia and Pacific Region, held at Tehran from 28 February to 2 March 1998,6 is an important forum for the discussion of initiatives for regional cooperation; 11. Requests the Commission on Human Rights to continue to pay special attention to the most appropriate ways of assisting, at their request, countries of the different regions under the programme of technical cooperation and to make, where necessary, relevant recommendations; 12. Requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its fifty-fifth session a report on the state of regional arrangements for the promotion and protection of human rights and to include therein the results of action taken in pursuance of the present resolution; 13. Decides to consider this question further at its fifty-fifth session. 85th plenary meeting 9 December 1998 5 6 United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 1520, No. 26363. See E/CN.4/1998/50.