4.3 Engagements with International and Regional Actors Which international and regional actors may be most relevant to the work of NPMs? A large number of different international and regional actors may be relevant to the work of NPMs. These include: UN Treaty bodies, most notably: the Committee against Torture (CAT) and the SPT, the Human Rights Committee, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). It also includes peer networks that NHRIs may be a part of depending on their composition, including the Global Alliance of NHRIs (GANHRI) and the Asia Pacific Forum of NHRIs (APF). Other UN and regional human rights bodies and mechanisms may also be useful to NPMs. These include, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) and its special procedures, in particular the Special Rapporteur on Torture, the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and those with mandates relating to specific groups in situations of vulnerability. It also includes regional human rights mechanisms, such as the thematic rapporteurships of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, in particular the one on rights of persons deprived of liberty. The list of bodies that may be relevant to the work of NPMs can quickly become very long indeed. It is thus important to stress at the outset that NPMs do not need to engage with all (or even any) of them all of the time. Indeed, it will be important for NPMs to only do so when it helps them to achieve change in detention, something that is addressed in the other questions in this tool. Why may NPMs engage with international and regional bodies? The first and most important reason that NPMs may wish to engage with international and regional bodies is in order to help them to achieve their own objectives. When thinking about why and when to engage, NPMs will need to keep this primary objective in mind, particularly given the time and expense that such engagement may involve for institutions with already limited resources. Nevertheless, engagement with international and regional bodies can be a powerful tool, helping NPMs to: • achieve their aims in relation to deprivation of liberty, • learn and strengthen themselves and others as institutions, • contribute to the development of standards and good practices, and • be better protected from reprisals. Engagement with international and regional partners, can also be a way for NPMs to contribute to strengthening the human rights system as a whole. This may include sharing information both with international and regional bodies, as well as good practices and ideas among NPMs and other oversight bodies themselves. How can NPMs engage with international and regional actors? Throughout this tool we have used the term engage to cover a large range of different activities. In this section, we try to break it down into the different ways it might happen. The Committee against Torture and other UN treaty bodies Sharing information, in the form of reports and statements and through face to face meetings is one 42 NPM Toolkit for Asia Pacific NPM-NHRIs