UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein stated that “Imposing such extraordinary and broad restrictions on the Human Rights Commission, including on their engagement with international organizations, is completely unacceptable,” and it is “designed to severely undermine its ability to engage with the UN human rights system.”1 HRCM held a meeting with Chief Justice of the Supreme Court on 22nd March 2016 to discuss the 11point guideline whereby the Supreme Court gave assurance that the guideline will not be a challenge for the HRCM to undertake its constitutional duty and to work impartially.2 An additional meeting was conducted with Chief Justice of the Supreme Court on 24th December 2018 and HRCM had requested the Supreme Court to further interpret 11-point guideline declared by Supreme Court.3 The Parliament passed a resolution against this Suo Moto case.4 It is also imperative to note that main stakeholders emphasized on the need to incorporate the plan of actions formulated since the change of the government in November 2017, however due to restrictions in the word limit or limitation in the number of pages of the UPR stakeholder submission, HRCM focused on the issues faced during this period along with the necessary positive initiatives. 6. Way forward HRCM with the financial assistance of Danish Institute of Human Rights (DIHR) developed an online monitoring portal in collaboration with Attorney General’s Office. 5 The objective of the portal is to transform present culture of manually compiling information shared by the intergovernmental agencies on the implementation of recommendations by UN human rights treaty bodies. This would help by internalization of human rights concepts, increase awareness on the accountability on human rights commitments, build institutional capacity to gather information. Presently, HRCM and AG office are in the process of entering information to this portal. Thus the follow-up work on the implementation status of recommendations from UPR review 2020 will be done via this portal. 1 UN OHCHR (2015). Supreme Court judgement gravely undermines Maldives Human Rights Commission – Zeid retrieved on 18th September 2019 from https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16106&LangID=E 2 HRCM (2016). PR-14/2016 (Dhivehi language). retrieved on 18th September 2019 from http://www.hrcm.org.mv/dhivehi/news/pressreleasearchive/PR142016.pdf 3 HRCM (2018) (Dhivehi language). Meeting held with Chief Justice of Supreme Court. retrieved on 18th September 2019 from http://hrcm.org.mv/dhivehi/news/page.aspx?id=740 4 Information obtained from stakeholders and stakeholder meetings August to September 2019 5 OHCHR (2018). Committee against Torture reviews the initial report of Maldives. retrieved on 18th September 2019 from https://www.ohchr.org/AR/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23951&LangID=E