5 CO-OPERATION WITH CIVIL SOCIETY 57 NHRIs can play an important role in protecting women human rights defenders by denouncing violations and heightening visibility of human rights violations, particularly by denouncing gender specific aspects of human rights violations. Documenting human rights violations and publicizing them can help to ensure that public awareness contributes to protecting these human rights defenders. NHRIs can further provide case studies or analyses at the international level, as well as letters for urgent action to Special Rapporteurs, regional mechanisms and international bodies, such as the UN Human Rights Council. NHRIs in the OSCE region reported that they engage with civil society in the following ways: • Exchanging information on women’s rights and gender equality issues; • Referring complaints to NGOs and receiving complaints from them; • Funding NGOs to support complainants; 36 • Training civil society organizations to assist individual complainants in national and/ or international proceedings; • Collaborating on treaty-body reporting; and • Joining efforts in advocacy work on women’s rights and gender equality. 36 For further information on collaboration between NHRIs and civil society, see, for example: A Partnership for Human Rights: Civil Society and National Human Rights Institutions, Commonwealth Initiative for Human Rights (2011).