c. The adoption of laws and protocols on the use of force, including restraint techniques and
crowd control weapons. Such laws should comply with international human rights law and
set out the conditions that justify the use of force, including the need to provide adequate
prior warning, law enforcement command structures and authorization procedures, level
of force acceptable to deal with various threats, the prohibition of the use of lethal force as
recourse in public demonstrations, implementation of an ammunition registration, among
others;117
d. The establishment of independent and effective police oversight bodies;
e. The key monitoring role played by civil society, particularly in the context of police operations
to disperse assemblies, and the States’ duty to facilitate and protect their monitoring role and
their integrity;118
f. The production, trade, procurement and use of weapons, especially those inherently
degrading or involving a high risk of torture and other ill-treatment;
g. The use of body cameras, in-car cameras and GPS tracking of law enforcement vehicles and
other new technologies to increase (self) surveillance of law enforcement officials;
h. The dangers of algorithm-based policing and profiling, as well as biometric and facial
recognition software;
i. The duty to de-escalate tensions through specific police units and protocols;119
j. The compilation and disaggregation of data on cases of excessive use of force by gender,
age, race, ethnicity, income and migratory status as well as differentiation by roles (incl.
demonstrators, journalists, observers, by-passers, medical personnel);
k. The importance of addressing vulnerability factors and patterns of discrimination, including
of marginalized or impoverished communities which are important triggers of extra-custodial
abuse by law-enforcement officials;
l. The monitoring role of the national preventive mechanisms (NPMs) and National Human
Rights Institutions (NHRI) in the context of demonstrations and other extra-custodial
settings;120
m. The use of the principles and guidelines compiled in the Istanbul Protocol to document and
investigate instances of unlawful use of force resulting in pain and suffering;
n. The importance of incorporating international and regional authoritative standards in laws
and policies, including General Comments no. 36 and 37 adopted by the Human Rights
Committee, the OSCE Guidelines on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly (3rd Edition), and the UN
Guidance on Less Lethal Weapons by Law Enforcement.
o. Public access to information on police misconduct, including the record of criminal and
disciplinary investigations and proceedings initiated, discontinued, as well as sanctions
imposed.
117. O
SCE/ODIHR and Venice Commission, Guidelines on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly (3rd Edition), 2019, para. 187.
118. S
ee OSCE/ODIHR, Second Handbook on Monitoring Freedom of Peaceful Assembly (2ed Edition), 2020.
119. G
uidelines on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly (3rd Edition), study n°581/2010 by Venice Commission & OSCE/ODIHR, 2019, para. 88.
120. U
nited Nations Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 37 (CCPR/C/GC/37) 2020, para. 30
18
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