What is the role of external experts?

In practice, most NPMs recruit external experts to participate in visits to places of deprivation of liberty, one of the central components of NPM mandates, during which they may be given specific tasks based on their field of expertise and competences. Their role shall, however, go beyond the participation in the visit itself. To ensure a common and coherent approach within the visiting team, external experts should always be integrated in the preparation of the visit. This will also allow the NPM to benefit from external experts’ knowledge from the initial stages of visit planning (e.g. in identifying issues to be examined and relevant sources of information on specific aspects to be looked at during the visit). Experts should therefore be informed from the early stage of recruitment that their responsibilities will include an active involvement and participation in preparatory meetings, which require investing time prior to visits.

After the visits, external experts should also be able to contribute to internal debriefings and to the drafting of the visit report. Experts can be asked to draft some relevant sections of the report, to send written inputs based on their observations during the visits and/or to review and comment on the different versions of the report. Whatever the modality chosen for the drafting process itself, external experts should have the opportunity to comment on the draft report of a visit they participated in.