74 12. The NPM’s international activities In 2017, the already wide-ranging professional contacts and experiences of the NPM were widened further. Attending numerous conferences held with the participation of domestic and international organizations, the staff members of the Department would brief the participants on the NPM’s activities. 12.1. Visit by the Subcommittee on Prevention Pursuant to Article 11a) of the OPCAT, the Subcommittee on Prevention shall “visit the places referred to in article 4 and make recommendations to States Parties concerning the protection of persons deprived of their liberty against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” The Subcommittee on Prevention paid a regular visit to Hungary between March 21 and 30, 2017; on the first working day of their visit, the delegation visited my Office. During the visit, the delegation met with the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights performing the tasks of the NPM, the staff members of the Department, and the representatives of the CCB’s member organizations. On March 28, 2017, the delegation joined, as an observer, my colleagues authorized to perform tasks related to the NPM during the latters’ visit to Unit I of the Budapest Remand Prison. Following the visit, in my Office, the delegation conducted consultations on their experience with the Department’s staff. During the meeting held in the Ministry of Interior on March 30, 2017, the delegation informed the representatives of the Hungarian authorities, including the designated staff members of the Department, on their preliminary conclusions. The report prepared by the Subcommittee on Prevention for the National Preventive Mechanism arrived at my Office on December 8, 2017, with the request to send back my response to its conclusions and recommendations before June 7, 2018. 221 The report was published on the NPM’s website.222 12.2. The NPM’s relations with other countries’ national preventive mechanisms 12.2.1. South-East Europe NPM Network I participate in the activities of the South-East Europe NPM Network (hereinafter the SEE Network), whose members perform the task of preventing ill-treatment in cooperation with and assisting each other, as an observer since 2014 and as a full member since April 21, 2016. The topic of the SEE Network’s conference, held in Belgrade on May 24-26, 2017, was the arrest of persons living with disabilities. The participants agreed that National Preventive Mechanisms play a special role in harmonizing the CRPD with the Member States’ domestic law. The Austrian and Czech ombudsman institutions also perform the tasks of the monitoring mechanism under Article 33 of the CRPD. According to the participants, the biggest problem is that the Member States’ penitentiary service personnel do not have the special competences required for providing care to disabled persons deprived of their liberty. The topic of the SEE Network’s conference held in Podgorica on July 5-6, 2017, was the provision of health care to persons detained in penitentiary and psychiatric institutions. 221 222 The Subcommittee’s report № CAT/OP/HUN/R.2. is filed in my Office under № AJB-791/2018 See Annex 2 Available at: www.ajbh.hu/opcat-SPT-jelentes-2017