COMMITTEE AGAINST TORTURE REVIEWS RECOMMENDATIONS FOR OPERATION OF OPTIONAL PROTOCOL

CAT
30th session
30 April 2003
Afternoon




The Committee against Torture met briefly in public session this afternoon to discuss a Working Group paper on guidelines for the operation of the recently established Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. The Protocol has yet to enter into force, but when it has been ratified by a sufficient number of States parties to the Convention, it will allow visits to places of detention in those countries by an independent subcommittee of the Committee.

The Working Group, made up of four members of the Committee, made recommendations on general issues, such as encouraging all States parties to the Convention to ratify the Protocol and calling for effective cooperation between the Committee and the subcommittee; on the composition and meetings of the subcommittee; on areas of coordination between the two bodies; and on the functioning of the subcommittee, such as that it annually provide a list of the preventive visits it was scheduling for the forthcoming year, and that the Committee provide the subcommittee with lists of issues and goals that merited special attention during its preventive visits and in the analysis of its findings.

Following adoption of the Working Group paper, the Committee went into private session to consider communications. It will reconvene in public at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 1 May, to begin its review of a second periodic report of Iceland.




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