Guidelines on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly. Furthermore, as stipulated in the Guidelines, “domestic laws should also be drafted, interpreted and implemented in conformity with relevant international and regional jurisprudence and good practice”.232 As such, participating States are encouraged to seek the expertise of international bodies that specialize in legislative review, such as OSCE/ODIHR and the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, and to implement opinions and recommendations of these and other human rights mechanisms, including the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association and the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders. 164. Application of legal regulations and procedural issues: Participating States should actively promote the full enjoyment of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly by human rights defenders. Assemblies should be presumed permissible unless they constitute acts that are expressly prohibited by laws, which in turn must be in full compliance with international standards. The exercise of this right should not be subject to prior authorization by the authorities. Instead, prior notification of the assembly should suffice to enable the authorities “to prepare and make adequate arrangements that might be necessary in order to ensure the maintenance, protection and promotion of the right of assembly”.233 The notification procedure, where required, should be simple and expeditious. It should narrowly define when and how the authorities can prevent an assembly from taking place to ensure that it does not become a de facto authorization procedure. If the authorities do not promptly present any objections to a notification, the organizers of a public assembly should be able to proceed with their activities according to the terms presented in their notification and without restriction.234 165. In practice, however, some participating States place considerable limitations on the right to freedom of peaceful assembly by imposing unwarranted restrictions and employing various tactics to obstruct assemblies. As a result, human rights defenders seeking to organize public meetings, marches and demonstrations in favour of equal rights for minority or marginalized groups or for conveying messages that are critical of the authorities are often denied permission or otherwise 232  Ibid. para. 12. 233  OSCE/ODIHR-Venice Commission, “Joint opinion on the Draft Law on Peaceful Assemblies of the Kyrgyz Republic”, CDL-AD (2010)050, para. 13. 234  OSCE/ODIHR-Venice Commission Guidelines, para. 4.1. 80 Guidelines on the Protection of Human Rights Defenders