UN torture prevention body announces upcoming country visits;
expresses concerns regarding Brazil
GENEVA (July 1, 2019) — In the
coming months, the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture will visit Australia,
Croatia, Lebanon, Madagascar, Nauru and Paraguay. The visits were decided
during the Subcommittee’s confidential session held in Geneva from 17 to 21
June. This year, the Subcommittee has completed visits to Switzerland, Costa
Rica, Sri Lanka, Senegal and Ghana, and is planning visits to Argentina,
Bulgaria, Cabo Verde, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
The Subcommittee has a mandate to visit States
that have ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, and
assist those States in preventing torture and ill-treatment of people deprived
of their liberty. The Subcommittee communicates its observations and
recommendations to States through confidential reports, which it encourages
countries to make public.
During its session, the Subcommittee requested
meetings with the Permanent Mission of Brazil in Geneva to discuss a recent
decree affecting the position of 11 members of Brazil’s National Mechanism to
Prevent and Combat Torture and to cease remunerating those working for the
Mechanism. The Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture has serious concerns that
these measures appear to weaken Brazil’s preventive mechanism and with it,
torture prevention in the country. The Subcommittee is still engaging with the
national authorities in order to better understand the background to, and
reasons for, these developments, with the aim of ensuring that the Brazilian
preventive mechanism is able to function effectively and in accordance with the
provisions of the Optional Protocol.
In other work during its session, the
Subcommittee decided to add Mongolia to the list of States that are
significantly overdue in establishing a National Preventive Mechanism against
torture (NPM) in their country. Mongolia ratified the Optional Protocol in
February 2015 and should have established its NPM one year after ratification.
The Subcommittee also adopted confidential
reports on its visits to Liberia and Poland, and sent the reports from these
visits to the state authorities and as well as the National Preventive
Mechanism of Poland.
During its session, the Subcommittee met with
representatives of the Association for the Prevention of Torture (APT),
Convention against Torture Initiative (CTI), and the European Committee for the
Prevention of Torture (CPT). The discussion with the latter focused on the
implementation of the memorandum of understanding signed between both bodies to
coordinate their activities in the countries visited by both of them.
ENDS
For further inquiries please contact Armen
Avetisyan at SPT Secretariat + 41 (0) 22 917 9227/aavetisyan@ohchr.org.
For media inquiries, please contact
Julia Grønnevet at +41 (0) 22 917 9310/jgronnevet@ohchr.org.
Background:
The Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture
monitors States parties’ adherence to the Optional Protocol to the ConventionAgainst Torture which to date has been ratified by 90 countries. The
Subcommittee is made up of 25 members who are independent human rights experts
drawn from around the world, who serve in their personal capacity and not as
representatives of States parties. The Subcommittee has a mandate to undertake
visits to States parties, during the course of which it may visit any place
where persons may be deprived of their liberty.
Learn more with our videos on the
Treaty Body system and on the Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture .
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