February 2006 minorities have unrestricted access to their legal rights and the justice system of the state in general. It is particularly important that those women in minority communities, who may face gender discrimination or domestic violence, are not prevented by internal community structures from having access to their legal rights and the justice system. 15. It is recommended that mechanisms are established to ensure that police are democratically accountable for their actions to people from all sections of the community. These need to include effective systems for making and following up complaints, which are accessible to persons belonging to national minorities. All sections of the community need to be aware of their rights and responsibilities in relation to the police, and of the powers of the police and the services they are expected to provide. In a democracy police should be accountable not only under the law through the courts and justice system, but also directly to the public, to ensure that police are able to explain their actions to the communities they serve and on whose consent they are in practice dependent. Accountability is a fundamental principle for 'community policing'. To ensure democratic accountability, formal structures need to be established at both local and national levels, such as forums or representative boards, at which police are required to report on their actions, and may be called on to explain and justify them (see also under Recommendation 12 above). National minorities need to be represented on such boards and to be able to participate in such forums, which should be held in locations which are accessible to them. National minorities also need to be free to raise their own issues of concern about policing, and to do so using minority languages. These formal structures should not be managed directly by the police themselves, but established so they operate independently. States need to facilitate the establishment of such structures, to provide resources for them, and to ensure that national minorities are able to participate in them effectively. States should also consider the potential benefits of making the establishment of accountability structures a requirement under the law. Effective mechanisms to enable individual citizens to make complaints regarding police behaviour (including in minority languages wherever possible) should also be an integral part of accountability structures. Citizens need to be able to obtain ^0