The Human Rights Council has also requested the Working Group to take action in connection with acts of intimidation or reprisals against relatives of disappeared persons and private individuals or groups who seek to cooperate or have cooperated with United Nations human rights bodies, or who have provided testimony or information to them, as well as persons who avail or have availed themselves of procedures established under United Nations auspices for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms or persons who have provided legal assistance to others for that purpose. V. FUTURE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE COMMITTEETO-BE AND THE WORKING GROUP As in other situations where both a treaty body and a special procedure of the Human Rights Council deal with the same kind of human rights violation, the Committee, created by virtue of the Convention, and the Working Group have complementary roles and functions, and should cooperate in order to maximize their efficiency and avoid duplication. In this respect, the Convention clearly indicates that the Committee shall cooperate inter alia with the treaty bodies instituted by international instruments and with the special procedures of the United Nations. Treatybased mechanisms and thematic special procedures have coexisted for many years, for example, the Special Rapporteur on Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and the Committee against Torture, as well as the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. An important difference between the two bodies is that, unlike the treatybased functions of the Committee, the Working Group’s basic mandate is humanitarian, acting as a channel of communication between the families of the victims and Governments. Furthermore, while the Committee shall have competence solely in respect of enforced disappearances perpetrated in a State party to the Convention, the Working Group is able to act on all reported cases of disappearance which have occurred in all countries, regardless of whether the State has ratified relevant international human rights treaties. As such, even if a country is not a party to the Convention, the family of a victim of an enforced disappearance is able to approach the Working Group to help find their loved one. 21