RIGHTS: UN Creates Global Anti-Torture Verification System

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Apr 24 2002 (IPS) - A United Nations body voted in favour of creating an international inspections system to determine whether torture is occurring at detention centres, although some countries, including the United States and Cuba, object to this new approach.

The decision taken by the UN Commission on Human Rights this week should be confirmed within the next six months, once it receives the go-ahead from the maximum UN forums, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the General Assembly.

Once in force, with the ratification of at least 20 countries, the mechanism would allow independent experts to carry out surprise visits of detention centres in countries party to the treaty.

Known as the Optional Protocol to the Convention on Torture, it functions based on the “twin pillar” approach of dual international and national mechanisms to prevent this type of abuse, said Mark Thompson, head of the Association for the Prevention of Torture, a Geneva-based non-governmental organisation (NGO).

The initiative is based on the principle of prevention, which the UN’s new special rapporteur on torture, Theo van Boven, of the Netherlands, says “is even more important than redress.”

“The protocol marks a milestone in the human rights system because it is one of the first preventive instruments in international law,” said Swiss representative Jean-Daniel Vigny, whose country, which holds observer status at the UN, backs the project.

The visits will provide international and national experts the opportunity to examine detention sites and prisons and to advise governments in drawing up formulas to minimise the risk that torture would occur, according to the representative of the International Commission of Jurists, Ian Seidermann.

“The mere possibility of a visit improves prison conditions and decreases the likelihood of very serious abuse, such as torture, taking place,” said Joanna Weschler, the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch’s UN representative.

With five years of experience studying prison conditions, Weschler pointed out that, “by definition, prisons are very closed places, and in some countries have no connection with the outside.”

The UN’s former special rapporteur on torture Nigel Rodley, of Britain, resigned in November. In his final report, he called for “a radical transformation of the assumptions of international society about the nature of deprivation of liberty.”

For at least a century, said Rodley, the paradigm has been taken for granted “that prisons, police stations and the like are closed and secret places, hidden from public view.”

“What is needed is to replace the paradigm of opacity with one of transparency,” stated the former rapporteur.

The proposed Optional Protocol to the Convention on Torture entails establishing an international and multidisciplinary committee of 10 independent experts, whose mission is to visit any place of detention in the countries that have ratified the treaty.

The committee’s faculties include the inspection of the treatment and living conditions afforded people who the state has deprived of freedom. If necessary, the committee may advise the governments involved to ensure that they comply with their obligations as stipulated by international law.

The protocol also requires the signatory government to create or maintain a national inspection system that allows inspectors to have access, without prior consent, to any place of detention.

Each country’s system would have the same objective as the international inspections system: protecting the human rights of the incarcerated individuals.

Thompson, head of the Association for the Prevention of Torture, said the treaty is justified because “there is a culture of impunity, a culture of badly run prisons and places of detention that must be changed.”

The possibility of having a team of international experts arriving to monitor prison conditions “will really strengthen the hand of officials in the country in addressing the situation,” he said.

Melinda Ching, representing the London-based human rights watchdog group Amnesty International, stated that torture most often occurs in places of detention, “whether to extract confessions or information, or to intimidate.”

“These abuses are particularly common where training and discipline of officials is not effective,” she stated.

Human rights-focused NGOs have been active participants in the 10-year negotiation process required to produce the optional protocol, in a working group created by the UN and presided by Costa Rican jurist, Elizabeth Odio, currently vice-president of her country.

But the initiative did not achieve consensus among the 53 countries represented on the Commission of Human Rights, nor among those participating as observers.

The adoption of the protocol, with 29 votes in favour, 10 against and 14 abstentions, was achieved after an arduous debate in which Cuba had resorted to procedural obstacles in a bid to postpone the vote for at least a year.

Also voting against the initiative were China, Japan, Libya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Sudan and Syria.

The objections of those opposed to the protocol were based on the fact that it permits visits by the experts without the consent of the country under inspection. This is one of the arguments that tend to block consensus on any monitoring or verification mechanisms of international treaties.

The delegation from the United States, which this year is participating only as an observer at the Commission of Human Rights, rejects the “virtually unrestricted power to visit any place where persons are or may be detained,” as granted by the agreement.

According to the U.S. representatives, it would be difficult to reconcile the granting of inspection powers with the need for appropriate checks and balances.

The European countries on the commission voted in favour of the protocol, having the precedent of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, which has conducted visits in 41 of the 43 states that are members of the European Council.

That body has proved the preventive value of the inspection visits and of the recommendations made, commented Amnesty’s representative Ching.