A/65/273
I. Introduction
1.
The present report is the twelfth submitted to the General Assembly by the
Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment. It is submitted pursuant to paragraph 38 of General Assembly
resolution 64/153 and is the sixth and final report submitted by the present mandate
holder. His previous report to the General Assembly (A/64/215 and Corr.1) was
devoted to the appalling conditions of detention found by the Special Rapporteur
during his country missions. Various factors, including malfunctioning criminal
justice systems throughout the world, corruption and a lack of empathy for persons
deprived of liberty, have led to a global prison crisis, supported by statistics on the
overcrowding of prisons, a high level of pretrial detainees and similar indicators.
The Special Rapporteur therefore continues to call upon the General Assembly to
take action to improve the situation of the 10 million prisoners and many more
detainees in police custody, psychiatric institutions and other places of detention
worldwide. In particular, there is an urgent need to draft and adopt a special United
Nations convention on the rights of detainees.
2.
In the present report, the Special Rapporteur wishes to draw the attention of
the General Assembly to the alarming situation concerning torture in the world.
During the past six years, he carried out fact-finding missions to 17 countries
around the world and three joint studies together with other special procedures. In
all but one country (Denmark, including Greenland), he found clear evidence of
torture. In some countries there seemed to be only isolated cases of torture, but in
the majority of countries he visited (which constitute a representative sample of all
countries in the world), torture is practised in a routine, widespread and sometimes
even systematic manner. Taking into account that torture constitutes one of the most
serious human rights violations and a direct attack on the core of the personal
integrity and dignity of human beings, this is an alarming conclusion.
3.
When the United Nations was founded in the aftermath of the Second World
War and the Nazi Holocaust, it was undisputed that the prohibition of torture should
be included as one of the few absolute and non-derogable rights in the International
Bill of Human Rights. Nevertheless, the practice of torture persisted in many
regions of the world, most notably in the military dictatorships in Latin America
established in the late 1960s. This prompted the United Nations to draft and adopt
the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment
or Punishment in 1984. The Convention builds upon the absolute and non-derogable
prohibition of torture and creates a number of specific obligations for States parties:
to prevent torture, to criminalize torture and bring the perpetrators of torture to
justice on the basis of a wide range of jurisdictions, including universal jurisdiction,
and to provide victims of torture with the right to an adequate remedy and
reparations for the harm suffered. In 2002, the Convention against Torture was
supplemented by an Optional Protocol with the aim of preventing torture and
improving prison conditions through a system of unannounced and regular visits to
all places where persons may be deprived of their liberty. Today, 147 of the 192
States Members of the United Nations, including 15 of the 17 States visited by the
Special Rapporteur, are parties to the Convention and 54 are parties to the Optional
Protocol. If States take their obligations under the Convention and the Optional
Protocol seriously, torture could easily be eradicated in today’s world. There is no
need for further standard-setting, only for the implementation of existing standards.
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