CAT/OP/NLD/1 as the legal basis for NPM work. The Act grants supervisory bodies the general power to enter all public properties, request information related to their mandate, and to conduct relevant research.4 In addition, each member of the NPM looks to its own foundational text, spread over a number of laws and regulations, as a legal basis for further NPM activities.5 Activities 19. Under the current multi-body structure, each member institution of the NPM takes on specific monitoring and advising responsibilities. The IVenJ monitors the security and justice sector in the Netherlands, with a focus on implementation of sanctions, police affairs, migration, asylum and national security. The IGZ supervises health and social care institutions and undertakes reactive work responding to complaints regarding health services, while the IJZ monitors the quality of youth care and carries out thematic investigations on a reactive basis. 20. The RSJ has the ability to issue appeals decisions related to placement and transfer, disciplinary punishment and special measures, medical care by institution doctors, and refusal to grant leave. In addition to issuing such decisions and providing advice on thematic topics, it is the RSJ that primarily takes on the role within the NPM of advising the government on public policy. 21. Through the work of their committees, NPM observer institutions, including the Commission of Oversight of Police Custody and the Commission of Oversight for Penitentiaries, also visit police and penitentiary cells. 22. The SPT acknowledges the State party’s efforts in implementing its obligations under the OPCAT and expresses its gratitude for the support provided prior to and during the visit, which allowed it to meet with different stakeholders and monitor the implementation of the mandate by the NPM. The SPT notes that the NPM is faced with several obstacles hindering the full and effective implementation of its tasks, which this report will address in the next chapter, together with recommendations to the State party. III. Main obstacles faced by the national preventive mechanism 23. While the State party is free to determine the institutional format of its NPM, it is imperative that an NPM is fully compliant with the OPCAT, as reflected in the SPT Guidelines on national preventive mechanisms (“NPM Guidelines”).6 It is also crucial that the functional and operational independence of the NPM are guaranteed, with due consideration to the Principles relating to the Status of National Institutions (“the Paris Principles”). Legal basis 24. While acknowledging the existence of legal provisions providing the foundational basis for each individual institution within the NPM, a striking weakness in the current functioning of the NPM is the absence of a separate legislative text regulating NPMspecific functions, an NPM mandate, the relationship between NPM members and other bodies, such as observer institutions and the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights, and other issues that ought to be regulated, in line with part IV of the OPCAT. 4 5 6 Dutch National Preventive Mechanism, SPT Work Visit Questions and Answers, July 2015, No. 3.2. Ibid. CAT/OP/12/5. 5