The Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) has published its third report on the status of the human rights treaty body system [3], as requested under UN General Assembly resolution 68/268 (2014) [4] on "strengthening and enhancing the effective functioning of the human rights treaty body system". In addition to providing details regarding the implementation of the above resolution, the report includes information on treaty ratifications, state party reporting, and in situ visits to state parties. It also outlines various challenges in implementing treaty body mandates in 2018 to 2019, such as under-staffing and a prior decision of the General Assembly to reduce the travel budget for high-level representatives by twenty-five percent. These were marked as the "biggest challenges facing the treaty body system" during the relevant time period. Finally, the report makes a number of conclusions and recommendations, including the need to better take into account the "needs of least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing States" so that they can meet their reporting obligations; the need to make better use of information and communications technology to make the review process more efficient; and the importance of ensuring that Committee experts "meet the highest level of recognized competence and expertise in the field of human rights and [are of] high moral standing and independent." The Secretary-General is required to report biennially.