The inquiry should also remind the Government that the penalty provisions of the legislation protect civil servants, including senior officials, who cooperate with the NHRI’s procedures by assisting the inquiry. The inquiry should identify potential risks in relation to individual witnesses before the hearings begin and take such action as it can to address the concerns before they eventuate. Part of this will involve identifying which witnesses will need to have their identities suppressed or will need to give their evidence in confidence to the inquiry alone. In extreme circumstances, the inquiry may need to seek assistance from police, if appropriate, or other agencies to provide protection for any witness who is in immediate danger. It may be necessary to have safe houses ready to accommodate those who need protection from physical violence. The nature of risks will vary from place to place and from time to time. In some countries, there may be a risk of retribution of some kind but little or no possibility of violence. In others, there may be an extreme risk of violence. The inquiry should undertake a risk assessment before conducting a public hearing and prepare responses to identified possible threats before they arise. The risk assessment should determine whether security measures are required to protect the proceedings and the persons in attendance generally, not only particular witnesses. Public hearings can be emotionally charged and there may be a risk of violence, even in relatively peaceful countries. The inquiry has a duty of care towards those who attend public hearings – witnesses certainly but also inquiry staff and members of public who sit in the audience. 11.8. STRUCTURING THE HEARINGS AND THE WITNESSES Most national inquiries will conduct a significant number of public hearings in different parts of the country. A key part of preparing the hearings is determining how they will be arranged or structured, that is, which witnesses and issues should be considered at which particular hearings during the course of the inquiry. In part this is a practical issue – who is available at which location? However, far more than that, it is a strategic question – what is the best way to arrange the public hearings so that they are most effective in obtaining the information the inquiry needs (the internal dimension) and so that they have the most impact in the general community (the external dimension)? The programme of public hearings should be decided well in advance of their commencement. This is necessary to ensure that all essential witnesses are given sufficient notice to be able to attend. It is also necessary to ensure that the inquiry has a good spread of public hearings, in key cities and locations throughout the country, in places where the key witnesses are located and in places that are accessible to the media. In a country where the media are highly decentralised, public hearings conducted away from the capital city or main cities will be important if the inquiry is to obtain the media attention it needs to communicate its message to the community as a whole. It is important also that inquiry goes to the victims in the places where they live and work, rather than always expecting the victims to come to it. The inquiry needs to be sensitive to the needs and views of victims, giving them priority at all times, provided that doing so is consistent with inquiry’s objectives and capacities. In structuring what topics will be covered in the hearings, a number of different approaches can be taken. The inquiry may decide that each public hearing will canvass the issue or situation generally, so that each hearing basically covers the same material. This can be appropriate where the media are highly decentralised and will report only what has been said in their own locality. This approach can be repetitious for the inquiry but in national inquiries, where a great deal of evidence may be anecdotal, it is important to have the evidence of witnesses corroborated or tested in a number of different localities. This was the case in the inquiries conducted by the Samoa Ombudsman/National Human Rights Institution on Family Violence, the inquiry by the New Zealand National Human Rights Commission on transgender people, and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission inquiry on rape and honour killings of women. Chapter 11: Conduct public hearings | 53