of the competent institutions in this trend and requesting them to present their achievements, initiatives and the measures taken in implementation of the royal directives. The government issued their responses on the Center's recommendations in the form of periodic illustrative reports for the last three years, published successively, the latest of which was issued in the second week of May, 2017. In addition, the Jordanian government took the initiative by proposing amendments to certain domestic legislations that have contributed to the reinforcement of human rights, in particular, those made to the Penal Code, pursuant to which (Article 308) has been repealed, and the concept of alternative community sanctions has been adopted. These reports constitute in their entirety a highlight of the concrete actions undertaken by all governmental institutions, whether they relate to policies, regulations or draft bills submitted to the Lower House, in response to the NCHR recommendations and observations. The Center is of the opinion that irrespective of its view concerning the impact of these actions on the reality of human rights and the degree of their compatibility with its recommendations, this level of responsiveness is deemed more positive for dealing with Jordan's national and international obligations and in addressing human rights issues. However, these governmental efforts being made towards human rights issues, still face challenges due to; the inconsistencies that exist between the national legislations and the international human rights conventions, as well as the existence of evident practices, which have resulted in remarkable increase in the number of complaints, in particular against law-enforcement authorities. This is in addition to the policies pursued by the authorities towards issues of public freedoms, particularly, the freedom of opinion and expression, the freedom of assembly and of association. Also sometimes the official handling of the complaints submitted to the Center and referred to the relevant official institutions has some shortcomings, such as the lack of commitment by some official institutions to responding to the Center's correspondences, the delayed arrival of such responses, or receiving partial responses. Key areas of poor response are sometimes, those relating to the achievement of a balance between national security considerations and respect for human rights. As a result, combating terrorism and extremism has become a serious challenge to guaranteeing the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and to the right to respect for privacy. On the other hand, there is an increase in complaints of torture and ill-treatment; this is in addition to the nonobservance of the fair trail guarantees, as the Center noted, through monitoring prisons and temporary detention facilities, that there are cases, albeit in limited numbers, indicate that this had occurred. Nonetheless, it needs to be stressed that such cases are limited and do not constitute a common and systematic practice or an approach of security institutions, which have taken, in many cases, decisive measures to hold the perpetrators accountable. These procedures, however, suffer from the fact that they are being done by a judicial body within a system which serves as both judge and interested party. 3