90 Report of the Eminent Jurists Panel on terrorism, counter-terrorism and human rights • Where this has not already happened, inquiries should be established to fully investigate allegations of serious human rights violations, bring alleged perpetrators to justice, and provide reparations to victims. To avoid a repetition of such violations in the future, permanent complaints procedures (involving Ombudsmen or Inspector Generals, as in Canada or Australia), can also be of great value, especially if they contain a mechanism that can act proprio motu, and can effectively access all relevant information. • States should seek to protect the secrecy required for effective intelligence without encouraging an institutional culture of secrecy. It is particularly important that States take steps to ensure that serious human rights violations can never be justified in the name of “state secrecy”, and that such crimes are never safe from sanction because of a culture of secrecy. Victims must not be deprived of effective remedies or reparation on the grounds of national doctrines such as “state secrecy”. And that at the regional and international level: • States recognise that the responsibility to ensure that their intelligence agents comply with international human rights law is not met simply when their agents refuse to participate directly in human rights violations. Measures (legal, policy, institutional) must be taken to ensure that their agents do not cooperate in human rights violations (such as secret detention, renditions, or torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment) even when carried out by others. • States should seek to protect the secrecy required for effective intelligence in ways that do not entrench an institutional culture of secrecy. States should establish clear policies, regulations and procedures covering the exchange of information with foreign intelligence agencies. Where such procedures exist, by way of binding instruments or understandings, they should be reviewed in light of all relevant human rights standards. In particular, information should never be provided to a foreign country where there is a credible risk that the information will cause or contribute to serious human rights violations. • To assist States in complying with their obligations under international law, it is important to draw up clearer international guidance in this area. The proposal, for example, of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe made in 2006, identifying the need to clarify the obligations under human rights law, in particular in relation to intelligence cooperation, and how to implement these obligations in practice deserves urgent attention in the European arena, and it could provide a useful template for wider consideration.