MONITORING PLACES OF DETENTION : A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR NGOS 4 the experience of these organisations in designing and implementing such programmes could be of use to others. This is why our two organisations decided to launch a project aimed at encouraging national NGOs to carry out visits to places of detention. The first part of the project involved the organisation of a workshop with representatives from 10 national NGOs from Central and Eastern Europe which are running such monitoring programmes. The workshop was held in Chisinau, Moldova, on 10 and 11 July 2000 (see participants in Annex 3, under national NGOs). The second part of this joint project is the publication of the present guide, which is in part based on the discussions in Chisinau. The guide was written by Ms Annette Corbaz, consultant for the APT, who possesses more than 10 years’ experience in visiting places of detention with the International Committee of the Red Cross. We would like to thank her for her commitment in the writing of this guide and thank also Ms Julia Bassam de la Barrera for her excellent translation into English. We would also like to extend our thanks to Mr Gerald Staberock, ODIHR Rule of Law Officer, for his involvement and continuous support in the realisation of this project as well as Mr Krassimir Kanev, of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, for his pertinent comments on the first draft. Finally, this guide also constitutes a form of recognition of the work carried out by the national NGOs that participated in the Chisinau work-shop and it should encourage them to continue their important activity. It is our hope that it will be of help to other NGOs and that some of them will be able to start monitoring programmes in their own countries, thus contributing to opening the doors of the closed world of detention and “to replacing the paradigm of opacity by one of transparency”. BARBARA BERNATH APT Programme Officer for Europe