A/HRC/4/3 page 17 53. At the request of the general directors of the Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Justice of the Transitional Government, in January 2006 the NGO Unité de Recherche et d’Action Médico-Légale (URAMEL) submitted to the authorities a draft agreement between these two ministries that would give the Institute of Forensic Medicine a genuine statute. Regrettably, although an administrator has been appointed, the agreement has not yet been signed. 54. The independent expert regrets that the promises that he received from successive governments on this subject were not kept, and he hopes that the new Government will adopt the agreement as a matter of urgency so that the Institute can finally make an effective and indispensable contribution to the efforts of the authorities, who have expressed their intention to wage a resolute war against impunity. Indeed, the Institute plays a crucial role in gathering evidence in most violence-related cases. In this regard, a judge without forensic science is a powerless judge. 55. On the initiative of the Ministry for the Status of Women and Women’s Rights and specialized civil society organizations, such as URAMEL and KONAP, a “draft agreement on the provision of a free medical certificate” was signed on 24 November 2006 by the Ministry for the Status of Women and Women’s Rights, the Ministry of Public Health and Population and the Ministry of Justice and Public Safety. 56. The draft agreement specifies that “a medical certificate may be issued to any person, including women victims of any kind of assault, be it physical, sexual or otherwise, by a licensed, officially recognized physician” and that it may also be issued by hospitals, health centres and specialized clinics. In other words, any medical certificate issued by a physician who is authorized to practise in Haitian territory is sufficient to permit the initiation of criminal proceedings. 57. It is to be hoped that the draft agreement will put an end to the interminable discussions on the competence or lack of competence of particular categories of physicians to issue such certificates. If the spirit of the text is adhered to, once a physician is authorized to practise in Haiti, he or she may issue a certificate, which implies that such certificates may also be issued by foreign physicians. 58. While he commends such progress, which he had called for in his previous reports, the independent expert emphasizes the need to address two remaining shortcomings. He wishes to point out that there had always been an agreement with successive governments, whatever their political leanings, that the aforementioned text would have at least the force of a circular rather than a mere inter-ministerial agreement. Moreover, it had been promised that the circular would not only establish the aforementioned procedure for the provision of medical certificates but would also validate the use - including by magistrates - of models for submissions and court orders (including interlocutory orders) prepared nearly five years ago by a multidisciplinary working group (magistrates, lawyers, physicians and social workers) meeting on the initiative of the NGO URAMEL.