13 2. Designation of the National Preventive Mechanism By virtue of Article 17 of the OPCAT, “each State Party shall maintain, designate or establish, at the latest one year after the entry into force of the present Protocol or of its ratification or accession, one or several independent national preventive mechanisms for the prevention of torture at the domestic level.” Hungary acceded to the OPCAT on January 12, 2012.43 Upon ratification, availing itself of the possibility provided by Article 24 of the OPCAT, the Republic of Hungary declared the postponement for three years of the implementation of the obligations under Part IV of the Optional Protocol concerning national preventive mechanisms.44 By virtue of Article 18, Paragraph 4 of the OPCAT, when establishing national preventive mechanisms, States Parties “shall give due consideration to the Principles relating to the status of national institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights”. The OPCAT was incorporated in the domestic legal system through Act CXLIII of 2011 on its promulgation. By adopting the Act on the promulgation of the OPCAT, the Parliament empowered the Parliamentary Commissioner, then a Status “B” national human rights institution45, and, as of January 1, 2012, the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights46, to act as the national institution conducting regular, unannounced visits to places of detention, a.k.a. the National Preventive Mechanism. Having been successfully reaccredited on December 29, 2014, as of January 1, 2015, I am obliged to fulfill the duties of NPM as a Status “A” national human rights institution.47 2.1. Establishing an organizational unit responsible for performing the tasks of the NPM On January 1, 2014, as part of the preparations for performing the tasks of the NPM, an OPCAT Bureau (hereinafter the “Bureau”) started its operations in my Office as a separate organizational unit, consisting of four public servants with law degrees and personal experience in visiting places of detention. During the initial stage of setting up the NPM, my Office tried to get acquainted with and make use of the experiences of national preventive mechanisms operating in other countries of the region. In order to achieve this goal, one of the Bureau’s staff members attended an international conference on protecting the rights of elderly people in institutions, organized by the Czech Ombudsman’s Office in Brno on February 20–21, 2014, within the frameworks of the project “Together Towards Good Governance”, financed by the European Union. On the day following the See Statement 9/2012. (II. 24.) KüM of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the entry into force of Sections 2 and 3 of Act CXLIII of 2011 on the promulgation of the Optional Protocol of the Convention against Torture and other Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment 44 See Section 4 of Act CXLIII of 2011 on the promulgation of the Optional Protocol of the Convention against Torture and other Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment 45 Parliamentary Commissioner for Civil Rights Máté Szabó sent the application for accreditation as national human rights institution and the related documentation to Geneva, to the International Coordination Committee of National Human Rights Institutions, on October 11, 2010. As a result of the application, in August 2011 the Parliamentary Commissioner for Civil Rights, and, as of January 1, 2012, the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights, acquired accreditation as a Status "B" national human rights institution. 46 See Section 45, Subsection (2) of Act CXI of 2011 on the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights 47 See Section 9 of Act CXLIII of 2011 on the promulgation of the Optional Protocol of the Convention against Torture and other Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment 43