A/HRC/4/3 page 2 Summary For reasons relating to the calendar of the former Commission on Human Rights, the report of the independent expert (E/CN.4/2006/115), which was circulated during the second session of the Human Rights Council, covered the situation in Haiti up to January 2006 and did not take account of the situation under the Transitional Government headed by Prime Minister Gérard Latortue. A brief update, which will be referred to below, was subsequently circulated in the Council in the form of a working paper (French only), taking account of the principal changes that had occurred in the political and institutional life of Haiti. Moreover, for health reasons which today no longer obtain, the independent expert could not carry out the visit that had initially been planned for the third quarter of 2006. Consequently, this report was largely prepared: on the one hand, in the light of information gathered from civil society organizations and with the cooperation of the specialized departments of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), particularly the Human Rights Section, the Justice Section, the Gender Unit and the Child Protection Section and, on the other, with the State services most directly concerned. Apart from a recent working meeting with the Chargé d’affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of Haiti to the United Nations Office at Geneva, the independent expert met, on separate occasions during their visits to France, in addition to the former Prime Minister of the Transitional Government, Mr. Gérard Latortue, with the President of Haiti, Mr. René Préval, and with Mr. Juan Gabriel Valdés, the former Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Haiti, and with his successor, Mr. Edmond Mulet. The developments in the situation can be summarized as follows: an undeniable return to constitutional legality but a long way to go to achieve a consolidated State based on the rule of law. The goal to be pursued during this period is to reduce the chronic malfunctions of the State - and their impact on human rights - as a matter of priority in the areas of the police, the judicial system, prisons and, more generally, in efforts to combat the impunity of perpetrators of particularly serious crimes which, at the end of 2006, took the form - in addition to drug trafficking - of waves of murders and kidnappings for ransom. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to strengthen, through vetting, the police and justice services, and to launch an ambitious plan of action to reform the judicial system. Shortcomings in the operation of the police force, the judiciary and the prison system have already been noted in the independent expert’s previous reports and a considerable number of problems remain. For the most part, these concern: − With regard to the police, there have been, inter alia, and apart from ill-treatment in cases of arrest, frequent non-observance of the time limit for remand in custody for which custody registers are all too often badly kept, the practice among certain police officers of “conciliation between the parties”, which can give rise to dubious financial transactions and abuses of authority, for personal ends, on the part of police officers; − In the area of justice, the independent expert draws attention to endemic corruption, the lack of legalism (district judges who do not respect the legal time limits for the transmission of cases, or who release detainees when they do not have the legal competence to do so), the authorities’ non-observance of the procedure for renewing judges’ mandates, chronic absenteeism of certain magistrates that can sometimes be