Annual reports NPMs should produce annual reports that include: uuaccounts of current challenges to the protection of the rights of persons deprived of their liberty and to the effective execution of the NPMs’ mandates, and strategic short-term and longer-term plans, including with respect to the setting of priorities; uuanalysis of the most important findings and recommendations and the responses to them by the authorities and other addressees; uufollow-up on issues from previously-published reports; uuconsideration of thematic issues; uuaccounts of cooperation with other actors on the prevention of torture; uuan overview of all their other activities and outcomes; and uuan overview of their structures and of the resources made available to them and spent. The States parties to the Optional Protocol have a legal obligation to publish and widely disseminate the annual reports of NPMs,53 which should be presented to and discussed in Parliament and transmitted to the SPT.54 IMPLEMENTATION OF NPMS’ RECOMMENDATIONS EXTRACT FROM THE SLOVENIAN NPM ANNUAL REPORT “Implementing NPM recommendations is a commitment of the State Party to the Optional Protocol. According to article 22 of the Optional Protocol, the competent authorities of the State Party must address NPM recommendations and establish a dialogue with it on possible measures to realize the recommendations. The success of implementing recommendations arising from NPM visits is annually presented in the Ombudsman’s Annual Report and in a separate publication in the form of a synthesis of our findings and recommendations and responses from the competent authorities in the report to visits to individual institutions. Thus from a total of 600 recommendations issued by the NPM after 67 visits in 2015, 211 have already been realized; 286 have been accepted, and 51 rejected, and the institutions visited or ministries have not taken a position on 52 of these recommendations.” RECOMMENDATIONS INSTITUTIONS VISITED police stations Aliens Centre psychiatric hospitals social care institutions special social care institutions prisons and the juvenile correctional facility residential treatment institutions entry and reception centre for refugees/migrants TOTAL Number of locations 23 1 3 21 5 7+1 twice 4 1 67 Realised Accepted Rejected 84 3 29 29 15 45 3 3 52 6 22 84 25 59 32 6 8 3 4 2 10 15 1 8 No data available 2 / 1 / 37 / 12 / 211 286 51 52 TOTAL 146 12 56 115 87 119 48 17 600 For more information: Annual Report of the National Preventive Mechanism for 2015. 53 Article 23 of the Optional Protocol. 54 The annual reports of the NPMs are available on the SPT website: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/OPCAT/ Pages/AnnualreportsreceivedfromNPM.aspx. KEY CRITERIA FOR AN EFFECTIVE NATIONAL PREVENTIVE MECHANISM I 31