A/60/399 with the United Nations Charter and other relevant instruments of the United Nations”. 7. The activities conducted by the Special Rapporteur also allow her to better identify the purposes of the mandate and to raise new issues of concern. The two country visits that she carried out in recent months have underlined the following aspects of the mandate: (a) The use of religion for political purposes; (b) The use of religious laws or practices in legal systems or legislation and their application; (c) The limitation of fundamental religious rights in order to protect one particular religion. 8. Communications sent to Governments as well as the replies received from them have also permitted her to further develop the following aspects of the mandate: B. 1. (a) Legislation directly or indirectly affecting religious rights; (b) Discrimination against women for reasons based on religion; (c) Human rights abuses committed in the name of religion. Methods of work Cooperation with other mandates 9. The Special Rapporteur notes that a very significant number of situations addressed by special procedures disclose violations or possible violations of more than one human right. This is especially the case of situations addressed by the present mandate. In many cases, persons persecuted because of their religious beliefs are also deprived of one or more of their other rights recognized by international standards (the right to life, the right not to subjected to torture or other forms of ill-treatment, the right to liberty and security of the person, the right to freedom of opinion and expression; see E/CN.4/2005/61 paras. 36-40). 10. Therefore, although existing special procedures may not cover all the human rights at stake in these situations, a coordinated and joint action is often necessary. Moreover, joint actions, usually taking the form of joint communications, have a number of advantages: (a) They give a greater strength, legitimacy and credibility to the action undertaken because they express the common voice of several mandate holders; (b) They increase the efficiency of the research process owing to the joint effort of several mandates and, thus, different expertise; (c) They generally improve the format and content of communications sent to Governments thanks to a sustained coordination among the mandates, especially at the level of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). 11. In addition to the classical method of joint communication, the Special Rapporteur believes that cooperation among special procedures is also beneficial with respect to in situ visits. Because of various circumstances, the same countries 5