A/HRC/24/32 directly into the systemic work carried out by OHCHR to improve management and treatment. 38. Respect for the procedural rights of detainees remained a focus during the period under review, in particular the rights of prisoners pending appeal. Without a final judgement from the court, prisoners are unable to apply for sentence reduction and pardon, and long periods pending appeal have deprived hundreds of prisoners of that right. Lack of awareness by the prison authorities of the legal framework governing prisoners pending appeal has also led to excessive detention: in Cambodia, the law provides that prisoners pending appeal by the prosecution remain in detention until the Court of Appeal has ruled on their case, which may be far beyond the end of their first instance term of imprisonment. Owing to lack of awareness, prisons applied the same system to prisoners pending their own appeal. 39. In order to facilitate the clearance of old appeal cases, OHCHR prepared lists of priority cases identified during the 2011 census of prisoners pending appeal. The lists were shared with and taken up by the Court of Appeal authorities, enabling prisoners to have their appeal case eventually heard and to obtain a final judgement. It is worth noting that the prison authorities also made an effort to transport more prisoners to attend their appeal hearings. No more prisoners have been waiting for their appeal for 10 years or more; several prisoners acquitted in first instance were also eventually released after another acquittal in appeal. 40. Information was also fed into the first national workshop bringing together all prison chiefs with the courts and prosecution authorities (see also paragraphs 21 to 34 above). In this way, the awareness of prison authorities was increased with regard to the requirement of requesting the release of prisoners who appealed once they have served the entirety of their sentence of first instance. As a result, many prisoners were duly released, thus contributing to a reduction in the incidence of excessive detention pending appeal. Nonetheless, further ongoing and concerted efforts will be needed to clear the entire backlog of appeal cases. 41. Following two consecutive years of emergency assistance to prisons during the 2010 and 2011 floods in Cambodia, in July 2012, the Office co-organized with the Ministry of the Interior a national workshop on disaster preparedness in prisons. Participants included all chiefs of prisons and correctional centres, as well as Provincial Governors or Deputy Governors, representatives of the National and Provincial Committees for Disaster Management, the Fire Brigade, and civil society organizations involved in disaster responses in the community. Participants in the meeting discussed the specific experiences, challenges and needs of Cambodian prisons and agreed on a number of steps to improve preparedness, such as the drafting of preparedness plans and the establishment of preparedness teams, or including prison authorities in relevant committees for disaster management. At the end of the period under review, a number of those recommendations had already been implemented in the prisons most at risk, and the Office had provided material assistance to several prisons to help them to implement their preparedness plans. 42. The Office continued to compile and analyse statistics and information on women, and women with children, in prison, for advocacy with the prisons, the courts, prosecutors and lawyers, as well as with relevant entities in the United Nations country team. At the same time, OHCHR was working with two non-governmental partner organizations, Licadho and Il Nodo, to help to provide pregnant women and women with children in prison with services, and to raise policy issues with authorities and partners. One such issue was the high imprisonment rate of women in Cambodian prisons: with more than 8 per cent of the prison population female, Cambodia ranks among the top 30 countries worldwide for proportion of female detainees. While the growth in the number of women prisoners stabilized during the period under review, the rapid increase had put additional pressure on 11