F. Conclusions and recommendations a) Conclusions 139. INTERPOL has been used as a weapon against journalists, human rights defenders, and refugees by states that are willing to abuse not only their own criminal justice systems, but also international cooperation mechanisms. We are delighted that INTERPOL now recognises that this is a serious challenge that undermines its efforts to make the world a safer place, and that it has begun to take decisive action to protect itself from abuse. that the implementation of these reforms will be an easy process for INTERPOL. The institutionalisation of human rights-related reforms is not without challenges in a policing environment. It is ultimately up to INTERPOL to ensure such implementation through its General Secretariat, the CCF and its Member States, but civil society and other external actors can also play a supporting role. We envisage four main aspects of implementation: information-sharing, monitoring through data collection, ensuring adequate resources, and awareness-raising. 140. The reforms that INTERPOL have adopted strengthen the organisation by helping to ensure that its systems are trustworthy tools for international police cooperation and not channels for exporting oppression. In particular, there have been significant improvements to prevent abusive INTERPOL alerts from being published, and to improve the effectiveness of the redress mechanism provided by the CCF. ‘The question is whether the… reforms adopted in Bali in November 2016 are sufficient to ensure that the CCF can henceforth provide an effective remedy to putative victims of abusive Red Notices. In my view, much will depend on how these reforms will be implemented in practice.’136 141. The reforms introduced over the last three years are, however, only the beginning. We conclude that there are now three priority areas for future work and propose that, while INTERPOL’s General Secretariat, the CCF and Member States must take the lead in meeting these priorities, there is also a supporting role for civil society to play. Fair Trials has been working closely with a growing movement of lawyers and civil society organisations to ensure international cooperation on criminal matters respects human rights. i) Implementation of existing reforms 142. While documents such as the Refugee Policy and the CCF Statute indicate a commitment to reform, they remain no more than words on paper without effective implementation in practice. We appreciate that these reforms are potentially far-reaching and ground-breaking, and we do not expect 64 136 137 PACE Report (n 50) General Assembly Resolution 9 of 2017 (n 128) Bernd Fabritius, Special Rapporteur on Abuse of Red Notices, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe 143. INTERPOL’s decision-making is only as good as the information which it has before it, with INTERPOL representatives suggesting that they frequently do not have access to the evidence they need to make robust decisions (either during the ex-ante review process or in relation to deletion requests). Member States have a particularly important role to play in the sharing of information that could help both INTERPOL and the CCF to carry out effective reviews. We know that INTERPOL actively encourages Member States to share helpful information, such as extradition decisions and refugee status determinations.137 While we agree that Member States should be encouraged to do this, Member States