The Prohibition of Torture and Ill-treatment in the African Human Rights System: A HANDBOOK FOR VICTIMS AND THEIR ADVOCATES XIII. Attendance of and Participation in NGO Fora and Public Sessions NGOs but not only attend the NGO Forum, which precedes most of the Commission’s sessions. Generally, NGOs at the NGO forum have observer status, but other NGOs are welcome to participate. Initially organised by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), the NGO Forum is at present organised by the African Centre for Democracy and Human Rights, based in Banjul, The Gambia. The aim of this forum is to provide a non-threatening space within which NGOs may exchange experiences and devise common strategies, as well as foster closer collaboration for the protection and promotion of human rights. Often, resolutions taken at the NGO Forum are pursued at the Commission’s public sessions. Preceding the Commission’s Seventeenth Ordinary Session, for example, the NGO Workshop adopted a resolution on prisons in Africa.538 This subsequently served as a draft for the Commission’s resolution on this issue. Public sessions provide an opportunity for ‘dialogue’ between State delegates and NGO representatives. Under the agenda item ‘human rights situation in Africa’, NGOs with observer status may make brief statements about the human rights situation in a particular country or about an issue of general concern. Frequently, government delegates make use of the opportunity to reply. On the one hand, these sessions serve to inform and sensitise the Commissioners, other NGOs and others present at the sessions; on the other hand, these sessions can be used to ‘name and shame’ recalcitrant States. In particular, allegations of serious human rights violations, such as torture, have proven to be issues to which States will respond, either by denial or with the promise to investigate and rectify the situation if required. XIV. Seminars To promote awareness of the Charter, the Commission organises ‘seminars’ in partnership with NGOs or other entities. One of the earliest was a pan-African Seminar on Prison Conditions in Africa, organised under the auspices of the African Commission with PRI, other NGOs and the Ugandan Government. It culminated in the adoption of the ‘Kampala Declaration on Prison Conditions in Africa’,539 out of which the post of Special Rapporteur on Prisons and Conditions of Detention was established. Another more recent example is the Regional Consultative Seminar 538 See F. Viljoen, ‘The Special Rapporteur on Prisons and Conditions of Detention in Africa: Achievements and Possibilities”, 27 Human Rights Quarterly 125 (2005). 539 Kampala Declaration on Prison Conditions in Africa, adopted at the International Seminar on Prison Conditions in Africa, Kampala, Uganda (19 – 21 September 1996) [hereinafter ‘Kampala Declaration’]. 126