A/HRC/11/8 page 10 25. In recognition of the significant social changes affecting these universally agreed standards and the management of places of detention, and the need to translate them into practical and relevant guidance for differing criminal justice systems, regional frameworks17 have been put in place and continue to develop. 26. In this respect, the Special Rapporteur calls attention to resolution 1997/36 of the Economic and Social Council on international cooperation for the improvement of prison conditions, in which the Council requested the Secretary-General to assist countries, at their request, in the improvement of their prison conditions in the form of advisory services, needs assessment, capacity-building and training. It also invited other entities of the United Nations system, including the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme network, as well as intergovernmental organizations, to assist the Secretary-General in implementing such requests. 27. International legal and political standards will have limited impact until the international community that they aim to regulate fully endorses their underlying principles. Such an endorsement in relation to those held in detention is slow in coming. The development of binding international law and guidance pertaining to education in detention is of course welcome and helps inform the international debate about the treatment of prisoners, especially in their access to education. Even though States have had a pre-eminent role in setting these standards, however, full compliance remains rare. V. THE REALITY OF PRISON EDUCATION A. Global detention: levels and trends 28. Precise and consistent data on the demographics and characteristics of people in detention are not available. Nonetheless, data that do exist suggest that over 9.25 million people are detained globally, either as pretrial detainees or as sentenced prisoners. Almost half of these are in the United States of America (2.19 million), China (1.55 million) or the Russian Federation (870,000).18 Prison populations are increasing in an estimated 73 per cent 17 For example, in Africa, the Kampala Declaration on Prison Conditions in Africa (1996), the Arusha Declaration on Good Prison Practice (1999) and the Ouagadougou Declaration on Accelerating Penal and Prison Reform (2002); in Europe, recommendation (2006) 2 of the Committee of Ministers to Member States on the European Prison Rules; and in the Americas, the Principles and Best Practices on the Protection of Persons Deprived of Liberty in the Americas of 2008. 18 The United States also leads the tables in the proportion of its population it detains: 738 per 100,000, followed closely by the Russian Federation at 611 per 100,000. See Walmsley, R., World Prison Population List (seventh edition), International Centre for Prison Studies, Kings College London.