E/CN.4/2005/85/Add.3 page 6 9. The Special Rapporteur would like to express her sincere gratitude to all the people she interviewed for their valuable contributions. Special thanks go to ASGI, CGIL, Congregazione Missionarie Scalabriniane, the Peruvian Consulate in Rome, Jurists for Democracy, the Working Group on the CPTAs, Magistrates for Democracy, Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) and Save the Children. II. LEGAL FRAMEWORK 10. Italy is a party to the main United Nations human rights instruments,2 with the exception of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. The Special Rapporteur was informed that there were no plans to initiate domestic procedures to ratify the Convention. 11. Italy signed the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air, and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children on 12 December 2000. The procedure for the ratification of these instruments is in its final phase and it is hoped that it can be completed in the next few months. 12. Legislation on migration, based on Act No. 40/1998 on immigration regulations and norms on the status of aliens of 6 March 1998, is incorporated along with other norms on immigration in Legislative Degree No. 286, of 25 July 1998, comprising the Consolidated Text of provisions concerning aliens, amended by Act No. 189/2002 on changes to immigration and asylum standards (known as the Bossi-Fini Act). As of 15 November 2004, the regulations to give effect to Act No. 189/2002 had still not been adopted and the legislation had been amended once again by decree-law No. 241 (Urgent provisions on immigration) of 14 September 2004, which subsequently, with changes, became Act. No. 271 of 12 November 2004. 13. Following the Special Rapporteur’s visit, the Italian Constitutional Court ruled3 that articles 13 and 14 of the Immigration Act breached article 3 of the Italian Constitution which stipulates that citizens are equal before the law, and article 13 whereby the adoption by the administrative authorities of procedures affecting personal freedom is permissible only in exceptional cases or emergency. The Court ruled that an immigrant could not, under the Constitution, be expelled after appearing in court without a proper defence, i.e. without a lawyer present. It also found unconstitutional the article requiring mandatory detention of an alien in breach of an order to leave Italy within five days. 14. Italy has ratified the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. An act on the right of asylum is being debated by the Chamber of Deputies. 15. Comments on Italian legislation on trafficking in persons can be found in chapter III, section D.2 of this report. 16. At the time of the visit a bill on religious freedom was being debated by the competent parliamentary commissions.