CAT/OP/SEN/CNPMRO/1 for partnership from a foreign organization whose suspected motive was to gain access, through the Observatory, to information about places of deprivation of liberty in Senegal. The Subcommittee recommends that the Observatory develop a targeted strategy for each visit. These strategies should be based on the type and size of the institution, its awareness of the seriousness of human rights issues and its ability to act on the Observatory’s recommendations. The Subcommittee also recommends that the Observatory create a digital database to centralize the information at its disposal and previous recommendations, which would also serve as its institutional memory. 14. Reply: The Observatory notes this recommendation with interest; it is currently developing a strategy along these lines. It recognizes that its methodological tools, including the Observatory’s Guidance on Visits and its visit protocols, concern only prisons and police and gendarmerie custody facilities. It undertakes to develop visit protocols for other places of deprivation of liberty, including psychiatric facilities and closed centres for minors, in cooperation with the members of the Monitoring Committee. The Observatory is responsible for selecting places to be visited in accordance with its rules of procedure; it does so on the basis of objective criteria discussed in advance by the observers. 15. The Observatory has included the establishment of a database in its strategic plan for the period 2019–2023; it intends to have launched the database by 2021. The Subcommittee recommends that visits be chiefly unannounced. This will enable the Observatory to observe the actual conditions in which persons are being deprived of their liberty and how life unfolds in the places it visits, without running the risk that these will be changed before its arrival. 16. Reply: The Observatory recognizes that conducting unannounced visits is the best way to observe the actual conditions in which persons are being deprived of their liberty and how life unfolds in the places it visits, without running the risk that these will be changed before its arrival. 17. The Observatory takes due note of this recommendation and will ensure that more visits are unannounced in future; observers are often reminded that, in principle, visits should be unannounced. It will also ensure that rule 16 of its rules of procedure is amended, since that article appears to have created some confusion about whether or not visits to places of deprivation of liberty should in principle be unannounced. While a considerable number of the visits conducted since February 2017 – when the current Director took office – were announced in advance, this is because most of them were carried out within the framework of projects with the European Union and the Subcommittee. Implementing these projects required developing programmes of activities for the different regions of Senegal. Activity schedules covering several days, including visits to places of deprivation of liberty, awareness-raising through radio broadcasts and training for law enforcement officers, had to be prepared for each region targeted by the projects. To ensure the success of these activities, all authorities concerned were informed about them in advance by letter and were sent the schedule for their area. The natural corollary was that visits were known about in advance, especially since the training activities directly concerned the officers of the facilities to be visited. 18. Most of the visits carried out pursuant to the Observatory’s annual workplan are unannounced. The Observatory even conducted a night visit to the Rebeuss remand prison and detention centre. 19. The most recent unannounced visit was to the Ouakam gendarmerie station in Dakar on 11 January 2021, which took place after the Observatory was informed that 40 people had been arrested for violating the curfew and the rules prohibiting gatherings in the context of the resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic. 20. All ad hoc visits carried out by the Observatory have been unannounced. The most recent visit to the Thiès remand prison and detention centre, which took place on 12 August 2020, was also unannounced. The Subcommittee encourages the Observatory to periodically offer all its members a capacity-building programme, including training in the principles of the Convention GE.21-03421 5