32 5. Visits conducted by the NPM Pursuant to Article 30, Paragraph (1) of the Fundamental Law, the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights shall perform fundamental rights protection activities, his or her proceedings may be initiated by anyone. However, when performing the tasks of the NPM, I have to regularly examine the treatment of persons deprived of their liberty, held at a place of detention specified in Article 4 of the Protocol, also in the absence of any petition or alleged impropriety.63 The primary objective of the NPM’s visit is to establish which elements of the treatment of persons deprived of their liberty may lead to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and how they may be eliminated. Another important task of the NPM is to make recommendations in order to prevent them from happening or recurring.64 Since the NPM’s task is not the ex-post investigation of activities or omissions causing fundamental rights-related improprieties, but to prevent the ill-treatment of persons deprived of their liberty, the Department does not inquire into individual complaints. If in the course of the visits individual complaints were submitted either to my colleagues or on the NPM’s website, the Department forwarded those complaints to the competent organizational unit of my Office. Although inquiring into complaints submitted on the NPM’s homepage is not the Department’s responsibility, analyzing them may provide guidelines for selecting places to visit and working out the major aspects of the visits. 5.1. Planning and preparing the visits Under the Ombudsman Act, “the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights shall determine the rules and methods of his/her inquiries in normative instructions.”65 Places of detention to visit were selected on the basis of the annual schedule of visits or in response to some actual event. After selecting the 63 64 65 See Section 39/B, Subsection (1) of the Ombudsman Act. Report on the Visit of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment to the Maldives (February 26, 2009), Clause 5. See Section 30 of the Ombudsman Act.