The UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture announced that it will visit Sri Lanka, Argentina and the State of Palestine, in addition to its previously announced visits to Bulgaria, Cabo Verde, Ghana, Senegal and the United Kingdom.
The visit to Sri Lanka will take place in early April, and a media advisory announcing the precise dates, as well as further information, will be issued ahead of the visit.
The visits were decided during the Subcommittee’s confidential session held in Geneva from 18 to 22 February.
During its weeklong session, the Subcommittee also discussed and adopted its 2018 annual report; during the course of last year, the Subcommittee visited, inter alia, 34 prisons, 53 police stations, 11 juvenile detention centres, eight psychiatric and health-care institutions, and three closed migrant centres.
It also conducted over 1,000 individual or collective interviews, mainly with detainees but also with officials, law enforcement personnel and medical staff.
To date, the Subcommittee has completed more than 65 visits. The Subcommittee has a mandate to visit states which have ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, and assist those states in preventing torture and other forms of ill-treatment.
The Subcommittee communicates its observations and recommendations to states through a confidential report, which it encourages countries to make public.
Courtesy: Colombo Gazette
