MONITORING PLACES OF DETENTION : A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR NGOS 26 4.1. The advantages of national NGOs As long as their action is governed by the principles of independence, competence, and ethics and their authorities grant them minimum guarantees to carry out their work under acceptable conditions, national NGOs possess strong advantages enabling them to make a constructive contribution to the protection of persons deprived of their liberty. Their main advantages can be summarised as follows: A permanent presence ■ Protection of persons deprived of their liberty is a continuous process which must be pursued regardless of the country's social and political situation; ■ National NGOs are in the best position to develop activities which are rooted in continuity; ■ They potentially have the capacity to act and react rapidly—for instance, if serious incidents occur in detention facilities. Knowledge of the environment ■ They possess, or have ready access to, the social, political, and legal know-how to set up and run monitoring programmes to places of detention; ■ They have, or can establish, developed networks of social contacts which enable them to follow closely the evolution of detention-related problems; ■ They are in a position to identify the best communication strategies for alerting the authorities, the national media, and society in general to the problems linked to and resulting from the deprivation of liberty.