Chapter 8 • International Legal Standards for the Protection of Persons Deprived of Their Liberty In order to be able to contribute to ensuring the full exercise of the right to freedom from torture and other forms of ill-treatment, judges, prosecutors and lawyers must be allowed to pursue their work efficiently and independently. 3. Legal Requirements as to Places of Detention and Registration of Detainees and Prisoners 3.1 Official recognition of all places of detention In order to protect the personal security of persons deprived of their liberty, they must be held exclusively in officially recognized places of detention. The obligation of States to comply with this legal duty is recognized both by the international monitoring organs and in various legal instruments. For instance, in General Comment No. 20 on article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Human Rights Committee stated that: “To guarantee the effective protection of detained persons, provisions should be made for detainees to be held in places officially recognized as places of detention and for their names and places of detention, as well as for the names of persons responsible for their detention, to be kept in registers readily available and accessible to those concerned, including relatives and friends.”67 Article 10 of the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and Principle 6 of the Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions contain similar requirements with regard to the holding of detained persons in officially recognized places of detention. Principle 12(1)(d) of the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under any Form of Detention or Imprisonment provides that there shall be duly recorded “precise information concerning the place of custody”. ***** At the regional level, article XI of the Inter-American Convention on the Forced Disappearance of Persons stipulates, inter alia, that “every person deprived of liberty shall be held in an officially recognized place of detention...”. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has had to deal with numerous cases involving disappeared persons, disappearances that have been made possible because of the failure by the respondent State to comply with the basic guarantees against arbitrary 67 United Nations Compilation of General Comments, p. 140, para. 11. 334 Human Rights in the Administration of Justice: A Manual on Human Rights for Judges, Prosecutors and Lawyers