As the OSCE institution with the most comprehensive human dimension mandate, the ODIHR is particularly well positioned to provide guidance to all OSCE field operations on how to deal with individual complaints, to provide training and expertise on specific issues, and to help ensure consistency in OSCE actions with regard to individual complaints. In addition, the ODIHR, like OSCE field operations, from time to time receives individual complaints of human rights violations. It may receive such complaints either by mail or email, in person at Human Dimension Meetings, or directly to ODIHR personnel working or travelling in the field, including members of election observation missions. The ODIHR’s options for dealing with such individual complaints are similar to the options available to missions described in Chapters 9 to 11. There are, however, significant differences as well, primarily that the ODIHR, unlike the field operations, usually does not have a presence in a country. As a result, the ODIHR must consult closely with the relevant field operation or other actors on the ground when deciding whether to take action. This is important in order to ensure that the ODIHR has all the information available to the mission, to avoid possible duplication, and, most importantly, to avoid the possibility that different branches of the OSCE will take conflicting positions on the same issue. For these reasons, the ODIHR does not usually deal with individual complaints. In some instances, however, the ODIHR may decide to take action on an individual case entirely independently of a mission. Such circumstances are not common. They might include instances in which a mission does not consider that it has a human rights mandate that includes certain issues but where the issue does fall within the ODIHR mandate. It might also include election-related issues that are at the core of the ODIHR mandate, particularly when an election observation mission is in the field. Other such circumstance might be follow-up to cases in which the ODIHR has intervened in the past or where consistency requires that the ODIHR deal in the same manner with similar cases in more than one country. In any such cases, however, the ODIHR should keep the relevant missions informed of its activities and the reasons for its decisions. As a rule, the impact of OSCE interventions on any individual case is enhanced if domestic authorities see that the OSCE is speaking with one voice. With this as the guiding principle, there are a variety of ways in which the ODIHR and field operations can interact effectively on individual cases, using the various options in Chapters 9 to 11. Field 111 13