DEFENCE FOR CHILDREN INTERNATIONAL (DCI) - Belgium | Practical Guide Children’s Commissioners / Ombudspersons for Children / National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) These bodies have a very broad mandate to promote, safeguard and assess the respect of children’s rights, including the statutory right of monitoring places of deprivation of liberty where children are held and receiving requests and complaints from children who are deprived of their liberty and to investigate these. The depth and frequency of their visits may, however, vary. Moreover, the task of monitoring children’s facilities is often only one of their many tasks. As a consequence, the required time, adequate human, material and financial resources as well as the necessary regularity of the visits are not always devoted to the monitoring mission of places where children are deprived of their liberty. Also, visits to such places are often undertaken to investigate specific allegations and examine an individual complaint rather than to preventively monitor and assess the overall conditions of deprivation of liberty. Depending on the situation, some advantageous features of the ombudspersons and national human rights institutions are the following: ʺʺ Independent and external ʺʺ Broad mandate ʺʺ Specific focus on children ʺʺ Accessibility ʺʺ Capacity to perform unannounced visits and large powers of investigation ʺʺ Public reports to the Parliament (annual and/or thematic) ʺʺ Authoritative recommendations ʺʺ Cooperation with other key actors Special monitoring bodies In some countries, special monitoring bodies have been set up under a specific Ministry (e.g. prison monitoring committee, police inspection commission) or under the Parliament but assigned to certain facilities of deprivation of liberty (ex: mental health institutions, immigration facilities). These Committees and Commissions are legally established as external monitoring mechanisms. Their members are however generally appointed by the relevant Minister. 44