A/HRC/27/59 powers are conferred upon local authorities, they would not be effective if no financial resources are available to carry them out.19 28. The principle of shared responsibility of different tiers of government for the protection and promotion of human rights has been on several occasions underlined by the human rights treaty bodies and special procedures. Thus, in paragraph 12 of its general comment No. 4 (1991) on the right to adequate housing, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights noted that States parties to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights should take steps “to ensure coordination between ministries and regional and local authorities in order to reconcile related policies (economics, agriculture, environment, energy, etc.) with the obligations under article 11 of the Covenant”. The Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, when visiting Italy in 2012, did not only speak to representatives of the national government and various non-governmental organizations, but also visited Rome, Milan, Bologna and Naples, and in her subsequent report (A/HRC/20/16/Add.2) explicitly referred to the importance of local political will to address violence against women. In one of its judgments, the European Court of Human Rights stated that “the authorities of a territorial entity of the State are public-law institutions which perform the functions assigned to them by the Constitution and the law. In that connection, the Court reiterates that “in international law the expression ‘governmental organisation’ cannot be held to refer only to the government or the central organs of the State. Where powers are distributed along decentralised lines, it refers to any national authority exercising public functions”. 20 29. In the context of monitoring of the domestic implementation of international human rights commitments, the relevant United Nations mechanisms could be encouraged to engage in a dialogue with local governments as well. Local authorities should be involved in the universal periodic review in respect of their Government; that would improve the quality of the follow-up to the accepted recommendations. Recommendations made during the universal periodic review and the concluding observations of the treaty bodies should be disseminated by central government to the local authorities. A reference should also be made to the harmonized guidelines on reporting to the treaty bodies (HRI/MC/2005/3) in which the reporting States are encouraged to make sure that governmental departments at the central, regional and local levels and, where appropriate, at the federal and provincial levels, participate in the preparation of periodic reports (ibid., para. 50). V. Role of local government in respecting, protecting and fulfilling human rights 30. The legislation of a number of countries — in some cases, at the constitutional level — explicitly requires local government to respect human rights (e.g. Australia, Côte d’Ivoire, Morocco and Slovenia). In some other countries, the respective constitutional requirement applies to all public powers (e.g. Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, Kenya, Lithuania, Malaysia, South Sudan, Spain and Togo). In Luxembourg, the powers of the communes must be exercised in accordance with the law which means that 19 20 8 The European Charter on Local Self-Government (see note 1 above) provides that local authorities “shall be entitled, within national economic policy, to adequate financial resources of their own, of which they may dispose freely within the framework of their powers”, and that their resources “shall be commensurate with the responsibilities provided for by the constitution and the law” (art. 9, paras. 1 and 2). Assanidze v. Georgia, application No. 71503/01, judgment of 8 April 2004. Available from http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx?i=001-61875.