1. General considerations Participants highlighted that a key challenge for monitors in this regard was to be able to identify the various places where migrants could be deprived of their liberty not in law, but in practice. A wide range of internal and external sources of information had to be monitored to identify those, and a regular and prolonged monitoring of these places carried out, to be able to identify cases falling within their monitoring mandates. NPMs and international monitoring bodies benefit as per their mandates from unhindered access to all places where they suspect deprivation of liberty may take place. Access of CSO monitors to detention facilities varies across countries and can sometimes be strictly limited. Whilst the limitations in CSOs’ funding resources can be an issue, in certain cases, it is a governmental policy not to open doors of the places of immigration detention to them. In certain countries of the OSCE region, the shrinking space for civil society poses an additional threat to CSOs’ access to migrants in detention, and their wider work on migrants’ rights. In addition, some OSCE participating States have criminalized the support provided to migrants by individuals and CSOs by newly adopted laws or by using existing provisions in law to press charges. The threat of criminalization obviously has a negative impact on the monitoring of immigration detention, in particular for civil society monitors. Participants agreed that the monitoring by independent bodies should remain fully independent and not subjected to any political pressure. In some countries of the OSCE region, NPMs were asked to participate in the FRONTEX European Pool of Experts who are monitoring return operations carried out by the agency and where the findings, unlike NPM reports, are not made public. Such additional activities can negatively affect the NPMs’ resources and strategic planning of their monitoring work as they have to mobilize staff and dedicate time to the detriment of their own priorities, which NPMs select based on their independent assessment of the risks of torture and ill-treatment in detention. Sometimes there is lack of communication between monitoring bodies which can lead to duplication of work. 2. Monitoring of forced returns Participants identified the monitoring of forced returns, a highly risky practice, as an important but also particularly challenging part of the monitoring of immigration detention. In focus: forced returns Forced return, or deportation, is defined as the compulsory return of an individual to the country of origin, transit or a third country on the basis of an administrative or judicial order. While the right to regulate the entry, stay and removal of foreigners in their territory is a sovereign right of nationstates, these are subjected to a number of principles of international human rights law, including the principle of ‘non-refoulement’ enshrined in article 33 of the 1951 Refugee Convention and article 3 of the Convention against Torture, which prohibits the extradition and removal of a person to a country, or further removal to a subsequent country, where they may be subjected to torture, inhumane treatment, or persecution.27 Despite these principles, and their operationalization being clearly defined in a number of instruments and communications, returns regularly take place in violation of the rights of those being deported, particularly in Western countries including in the Furthermore, returns are also subject to the principles of prohibition of collective expulsion, the prohibition of forced labour and the respect of the right to life. 27 14