Fundamental Safeguards Against Ill-Treatment: Good Practices and Challenges

This contribution is a critical review of fundamental safeguards against torture and other ill-treatment. It focuses on the concept of prevention as developed through the work of the CPT and the OPCAT mechanisms and explores its meaning at the international and at the domestic level. The preventive approach, based on visits to places of detention and followed up by constructive dialogue with authorities, translated into norms of international law the work of the ICRC. This works well and effectively at the level of international visiting mechanisms. However, the adoption of a purely preventive approach at the national level into the work of the national preventive mechanisms may create problems with the synchronisation of this approach with other positive obligations of the states. While the existing mechanisms for punishment and prevention of torture and other ill-treatment contributed to the reduction of their incidence, they are still widespread in many parts of the world, including in states which availed themselves of international scrutiny in all its different forms. There is therefore a need to do more. It is suggested that civil society involvement in monitoring and legal assistance to victims of torture and other ill-treatment may contribute further to their eradication. The contribution reviews the current state of international standards in that regard and proposes the establishment of a firm legal basis for NGO access to all places of detention.