interviews with the persons deprived of their liberty without witnesses, either personally or with a translator if deemed necessary, as well as with any other person who the national preventive mechanism believes may supply relevant information; treatment or punishment; (b) To make recommendations to the relevant authorities with the aim of improving the treatment and the conditions of the persons deprived of their liberty and to prevent torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, taking into consideration the relevant norms of the United Nations; (c) To submit proposals and observations concerning existing or draft legislation. Under Article 20, the State Parties grant NPMs (a) Access to all information concerning the number of persons deprived of their liberty in places of detention as defined in article 4, as well as the number of places and their location; (b) Access to all information referring to the treatment of those persons as well as their conditions of detention; (c) Access to all places of detention and their installations and facilities; (d) The opportunity to have private (e) Freedom to choose the places they want to visit and the persons they want to interview; (f ) The right to have contacts with the Subcommittee on Prevention, to send it information and to meet with it. “No authority or official shall order, apply, permit or tolerate any sanction against any person or organization for having communicated to the national preventive mechanism any information, whether true or false, and no such person or organization shall be otherwise prejudiced in any way” (part one of Article 21). “Confidential information collected by the national preventive mechanism shall be privileged. No personal data shall be published without the express consent of the person concerned” (part two of Article 21). 1.1.2. SPECIFIC FEATURES OF THE “OMBUDSMAN +”NPM FORMAT IN UKRAINE On October 2, 2012 the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed the Law of Ukraine “On Amendments to the “Law of Ukraine on the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights” vesting the NPM functions with the Ombudsman of Ukraine. Under p. 8 of Article 13 of the “Law of Ukraine on the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights” the NPM has the right to visit, without prior notification about the time and purpose of such visits and without any limitation of the number of visits: • places where individuals are forcibly held by virtue of a decision of a court or an administrative authority in accordance with the law, including temporary holding facilities, rooms for detained and apprehended persons with duty units of Internal Affairs (police) authorities, temporary accommodation centers for foreign