E/CN.4/2000/9/Add.1 page 30 Executive on all national or international human rights issues, thus contributing to the fulfilment of Venezuela’s commitments under international agreements and treaties; to consider and recommend appropriate domestic measures to that end; and to serve as a body for facilitating cooperation between the Executive and NGOs. It stated that the Commission was made up of representatives of the Procurator General’s Office, the Ministries of the Interior, Foreign Affairs, Defence, Education, Labour, Justice and the Family, the Office of the Governor of the Federal District and the National Borders Council. 147. The Government also drew attention to the following improvements and innovations introduced by the CCP: abolition of sub judice rule; changeover to an accusatorial system; establishment of the principle of human dignity; system of two parties with a third, impartial party (judge) empowered to introduce facts into the proceedings by interrogating experts and witnesses, and ordering the taking of new evidence; exceptional nature of pre-trial detention as a reinforcement of the principle of personal liberty; reflection of the presumption of innocence principle throughout the legislation; attribution of responsibility for criminal proceedings to the Public Prosecutor’s Office; subordination of the Judicial Police to the Public Prosecutor’s Office; oral nature of criminal proceedings; public proceedings as a general rule; concentration of oral proceedings in a single day or as few consecutive days as possible; principle of immediacy, in that the court alone may render its judgement, based on facts and evidence evaluated by it; participation of the public through mixed courts comprising two “escabinados” and the institution of juries; change in the system for assessing evidence, with the invalidation of all illicit means of extracting evidence, especially torture, and the introduction in its place of a system of assessment based on the principle of personal conviction as a direct consequence of the principle of immediacy; more expeditious proceedings; derogation from the special procedures provided for in the Public Heritage Protection Act and the Act relating to Narcotic and Psychotropic Substances; establishment of the post of enforcement judge to monitor the legality of that phase of the criminal proceedings; and reorganization of the phases of criminal proceedings: preparatory phase handled by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, intermediate phase in which the court upholds the charges or decides to dismiss the case, and public hearing in the presence of the accused. 148. The Government also reported the establishment of the Social Alliance for Justice, made up of social, entrepreneurial, academic and corporate organizations, which was intended to coordinate participation by civil society in State action through the monitoring of the new legislative reform processes, preparation of a bill to reform the title of the Constitution relating to the judiciary and Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the holding of a campaign to raise public awareness of the urgency of the reform and the need for public support in carrying it out. -----