73. At a second level, regional organizations have developed mechanisms to monitor compliance with human rights standards by countries in their respective regions. Such mechanisms include the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Court of Human Rights, the African Commission and Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the European Court of Human Rights and the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. 74. At the international (global) level, human rights are monitored by a number of international NGOs and by the United Nations. Within the United Nations, several types of monitoring are carried out. 75. The first is “conventional” (or treaty-based) monitoring. Some human rights treaties establish a committee of experts (a “treaty body”, such as the Human Rights Committee or the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women) whose main task is to monitor the implementation by States parties of the relevant treaty, mainly through the analysis of periodic reports submitted by those States. Five treaty bodies also have competence to examine individual complaints of human rights violations, under optional complaints procedures (the Human Rights Committee, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Committee against Torture, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families). 76. The second type of monitoring is “extraconventional” (or Charter-based) monitoring. It is based on procedures and mechanisms established by the Commission on Human Rights or the Economic and Social Council, including a confidential procedure (known as the “1503 procedure”) for dealing with communications relating to consistent patterns of gross violations of human rights, and special public procedures which examine, monitor and report on human rights situations either in specific countries and territories (“country mechanisms or mandates”) or concerning a specific human rights problem (“thematic mechanisms or mandates”). They are entrusted to working groups composed of experts acting in their individual capacity (such as the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention), to individuals designated as special rapporteurs, representatives or independent experts (such as the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the situation of human rights in Cambodia, and the independent expert on the situation of human rights in Haiti) or directly to the Secretary-General (as is the case for the question of human rights and mass exoduses). 77. Fourteen thematic mandates are able to deal with urgent action appeals in response to individual allegations that a serious human rights violation is about to be committed. Such situations include imminent extrajudicial execution, fear that a detained individual may be subjected to torture, or a threat to the life of a human rights defender. In these cases, the particular special rapporteur or chairperson of a working group may address a message to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the State concerned by telefax, requesting the Government to clarify the particular case and to take the necessary steps to guarantee the rights of the alleged victim. The thematic mandates that deal with urgent action include, among others, the Special Rapporteurs on torture; 33