CAT/OP/ARG/1/Add.1 • Analytical self-assessment tool for national prevention mechanisms: A preliminary guide by the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture regarding the functioning of a national preventive mechanism (CAT/OP/1); • Guidelines of (CAT/OP/12/5); the Subcommittee on national preventive mechanisms • Procedure governing the power granted to the President of the Nation to appoint judges to the Supreme Court of Justice, set forth in article 99, paragraph 4, of the Constitution (Decree No. 222/2003); • Handbook No. 1527 of 6 November 2009 regulating the procedure for implementing the National Preventive Mechanism Unit of the Ombudsman’s Office of Costa Rica; • Decree No. 1172/2003 (Access to public information). II. Provincial preventive mechanisms 3. On 16 and 17 May 2013, the Federal Human Rights Council met in Mendoza for its seventeenth plenary session. 4. At its previous session, the Chairperson of the Federal Human Rights Council, Martín Fresneda, Secretary for Human Rights, had identified the subject of institutional violence as a priority for the work of all secretaries and deputy secretaries for Human Rights in the provinces. The National Preventive Mechanism Act had recently been adopted and the local secretaries had been urged to provide political impetus to the provincial mechanisms projects. 5. At this session, Minister Federico Villegas Beltrán, Director-General for Human Rights of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship, was invited to join the panel discussion on national preventive mechanisms. The Minister made reference to the international obligations arising from the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the need to draft regulations for and implement the National Preventive Mechanism Act and set up the Federal Council of Local Mechanisms. 6. In order to join the Federal Council of Local Mechanisms, provinces need to adopt and implement their own mechanism in accordance with the requirements laid down in national law. The provinces of Chaco and Río Negro reported that they have already passed legislation establishing a local mechanism and have implemented it. Mendoza, Tucumán, Salta and Tierra del Fuego have passed the relevant legislation but have not yet regulated or established a local mechanism. Buenos Aires, La Pampa, Misiones and Entre Ríos have confirmed that they have obtained the political commitment of their respective legislatures to approve a local mechanism in the near future, even perhaps before the next legislative elections. 7. Minister Villegas Beltrán said that putting an end to immunity for crimes against humanity granted the moral authority to move forward with the implementation of preventive mechanisms, which would act as a bridge between past and future in terms of human rights. III. Security forces 8. After evaluating each of the observations concerning police performance and conditions of detention observed in the third and fifteenth district police stations of the Federal Police Force of Argentina, the Ministry of Security compiled the following 4 GE.14-40297