The Optional Protocol to the UN Torture Convention (OPCAT) is unique amongst the UN human rights treaties and their Optional Protocols. Unique as it is not normative because it does not set out a new right which would be additional to those elaborated in the Torture Convention itself. Nor is it purely procedural as it does not set out, for example, a mechanism for complaints system to reinforce the rights enshrined in the Torture Convention. The OPCAT is unique as it is the only one among the UN human rights treaties which adopts a purely preventive stance by laying down mechanics for ensuring implementation of the obligation to prevent torture encapsulated in Article 2 of the Torture Convention. This torture prevention architecture is premised on the central conviction that regular visits by independent bodies to places of deprivation of liberty would minimise the risk of torture and other ill-treatment and thus aid the implementation of the obligation to prevent the occurrence of torture. The fundamental building-bricks of this OPCAT torture prevention system rests…
Torture
Page 1 of 13
Monitoring migrants’ human rights at the EU borders: EU law v the UN OPCAT?
The present contribution provides some preliminary considerations concerning the compatibility between the EU independent national mechanisms (INMs) to be set up under EU regulation 2024/1356 and the National Preventive Mechanisms (NPMs) set up under the 2002 UN Optional Protocol for the Prevention of Torture. Should existing NPMs be tasked with the EU monitoring mandate envisaged under the regulation,…
Manuela et al. v. El Salvador: The Pitfalls of a Landmark Case for Reproductive Justice from a Torture Perspective
On November 30, 2021, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) published its judgment in Manuela et al v. El Salvador. The case concerned El Salvador’s responsibility for the arbitrary detention, torture, and conviction of a woman who experienced an obstetric emergency and lost her pregnancy in 2008. The dispute took place in the context…
What’s at Stake in the Abortion Case Before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights?
El Salvador’s punitive treatment of women through its absolute criminalization of abortion will come under scrutiny by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (the “Court”) on March 22-23, in a case involving the state’s treatment of a woman in need of a life-saving abortion. Beatriz was a young woman from the impoverished state of Usulután,…
“Friends of the court” making the most of Amicus Curiae with UN Treaty Bodies
The practice of submitting Third Party Interventions (TPIs) – also known as Amicus Curiae briefs - is well established in Commonwealth jurisdictions, and it has become common practice within regional mechanisms such as the Inter-American and European Courts of Human Rights, and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ rights. Similarly, most of the eight UN…
- Page 1 of 13
- Last