reprisals by increasing the frequency of visits to those detention facilities visited by the SPT immediately after the visit and when the report is submitted to the government (the detention centres visited are listed in the press release). The presence of NGO and NPM representatives can often have a significant preventive effect in this regard. However, since it is not always very clear when the SPT releases its report to the government, one may request that the SPT Secretariat announce publically or just to the NPM and NGO community when the report is released to the government, so they know when to take action. Follow-up to recommendations is among the most important elements of the work of international human rights monitoring mechanisms such as the SPT. It happens all too often that there is little or no implementation of recommendations given by such mechanisms. While the government is mainly responsible for this follow-up, NGOs also have an important role to play. When the domestic political environment allows, NGOs can engage with the government and other national and international stakeholders to support the implementation of SPT recommendations, if these are made public. For certain services in detention, such as torture rehabilitation, NGOs might be better positioned to provide the direct services than government actors due to their independent status. In other cases, NGOs simply possess skills that the relevant government agencies do not have, such as torture documentation knowledge. This does not mean that the primary responsibility falls on the NGOs, but they do have a role to play. Before engaging in such activities, it is important to make a thorough evaluation of how genuine the governments’ engagement is, in order to avoid NGOs and other actors being used to shelter the government from further international criticism. In order for the SPT to effectively monitor the implementation of its recommendations, it is important that it receives follow-up reports both from the government and from national NGOs, so that it can conduct a balanced assessment. To promote this, NGOs can lobby the government to submit its written follow-up information within the six-month deadline established by the SPT. Furthermore, NGOs can submit their own follow-up reports to the SPT. In a case where the visit report is not public, NGOs can submit follow-up reports to provide a general update on whether the situation in detention facilities has changed after the visit, with a special focus on the facilities visited by the SPT as listed in the visit press release. Even though they cannot know exactly what recommendations were made to the government with regard to specific detention facilities, they can make sure that the information targets some of the issues identified in NGO reports prior to the visit since these are likely to have been the focus of some SPT recommendations. In addition, the report can also focus on the process of establishing an NPM and the functioning of existing NPMs since this will always be of interest to the SPT. Such a report should be submitted approximately around the six-month deadline imposed on the government. In cases where the visit report is public, NGOs have the opportunity to focus their follow-up reports on the implementation of specific recommendations in the report. In this situation, it is advisable to hold off submitting the follow-up report until the Working with the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture: A practical guide for NGOs engaging with SPT country visits 15