Preventing Torture in the OSCE region

Prague, 25-26 November 2008

A major international conference on the prevention of torture, co-organized by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and the University of Bristol,  is being held in Prague from 25th – 26th November 2008. The event will bring together high-profile experts and representatives of governments, civil society, the OSCE, the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture and the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture. A number of Ombudspersons from various countries across the region will also be attending. The conference will look at the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture (OPCAT) which is aimed at the prevention of torture through the establishment of national and international bodies with powers to visit places of detention.

Members of these international and national monitoring bodies as well as academics and representatives of various national and international human rights organisations will attend the conference, which will be a platform to debate various issues surrounding the establishment and operation of these visiting bodies. Delegates from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Denmark, Estonia, Georgia, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Slovenia, Sweden, the UK and Ukraine as well as many local representatives from the Czech Republic will be participating.

‘We see the OPCAT as a very promising tool in the area of torture prevention throughout the OSCE region and encourage participating States to ratify and implement the protocol’, said Carsten Weber, the Chief of the ODIHR’s Rule of Law Unit. ‘ I hope that best practices we may be able to identify here in the conference will assist countries to develop models for more effective implementation of the OPCAT and advance the anti-torture agenda throughout the area.’

The event is part of a three-year research project at the University of Bristol in the UK that aims to study the OPCAT and the effectiveness of national torture preventive mechanisms, and which is financed by the British-based Arts and Humanities Research Council. The conference has been organised with funding from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the British government.

As Renate Kicker, the First Vice President from the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture says:

‘For the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), synergy and coordination with the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture (SPT) when active in Europe on the one side, as well as the newly established National Preventive Mechanisms (NPMs) in member states on the other side, is crucial for the success of its preventive work. All of these bodies while operating on different levels want to achieve the same goal. Therefore it is important that uniform standards, as well as working methods, are developed and applied. This conference brings together members of all three different levels of expert bodies and will offer a forum to discuss these issues’.

For more information about the conference or the project, please visit the website at http://bristol.ac.uk/law/research/centres-themes/opcat/index.html.

For press information, please contact:
Ms. Emma Rowlstone (Emma.Rowlstone@bristol.ac.uk), Prof. Rachel Murray (Rachel.Murray@bristol.ac.uk), Dr Elina Steinerte (Elina.Steinerte@bristol.ac.uk) or Mr Antenor Hallo de Wolf (a.hallodewolf@bristol.ac.uk):
School of Law
University of Bristol, UK
Tel. +44-(0)117 954 5330; +44-(0)117 954 5603