Which international and regional actors may be most relevant to the work of NPMs?

A large number of different international and regional actors may be relevant to the work of NPMs. These include:

UN Treaty bodies, most notably: the Committee against Torture (CAT) and the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT), as well as the Human Rights Committee,  the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).  

It also includes peer networks that NPMs may be a part of depending on their composition, including: the Global Alliance of NHRIs (GANHRI) and its different regional networks, the Association Francophone des Commissions Nationales de Droits de l’Homme (AFCNDH) and the International Ombudsman Institute (IOI).

In some regions there are also regional monitoring bodies, such as the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), the Committee for the Prevention of Torture in Africa (CPTA), the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that conduct country visits, including to places of detention and produce reports, recommendations and guidance that may be of use to NPMs.

International and regional courts may also be relevant to the work of NPMs, in particular the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights (ACHPR) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Other UN and regional human rights bodies and mechanisms may also be useful to NPMs. These include, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) and its special procedures, in particular the Special Rapporteur on Torture, the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and those with mandates relating to specific groups in situations of vulnerability. It also includes regional human rights mechanisms, such as the thematic rapporteurships of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, in particular the one on rights of persons deprived of liberty.

The list of bodies that may be relevant to the work of NPMs can quickly become very long indeed. It is thus important to stress at the outset that NPMs do not need to engage with all (or even any) of them all of the time. Indeed, it will be important for NPMs to only do so when it helps them to achieve change in detention, something that is addressed in the other questions in this tool.

Note that, due to their particular relationship, enshrined in the OPCAT, interactions between NPMs and the SPT are dealt with in their own tool.