Committee against Torture closes sixty-fifth session

ROUNDUP

Adopts Concluding Observations on the Reports of Canada, Guatemala, Maldives, the Netherlands, Peru and Viet Nam 

GENEVA (7 December 2018) - The Committee against Torture this morning concluded its sixty-fifth session after adopting concluding observations and recommendations on the reports of Canada, Guatemala, Maldives, the Netherlands, Peru and Viet Nam on the implementation of the provisions of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

The Committee’s concluding observations and recommendations on the reviewed countries will be available on the session’s website.  

Jens Modvig, Committee Chairperson, in his closing remarks, noted that the Committee had adopted concluding observations and recommendations on the reports reviewed during the session: Canada, Guatemala, Maldives, the Netherlands, Peru and Viet Nam.  It had adopted programmes of work for future sessions, deciding to review the reports of Benin, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Germany, Mexico, South Africa and the United Kingdom at its next session from 23 April to 17 May; the reports of Greece, Poland, Togo and Bangladesh in the absence of initial report at the sixty-seventh session in July and August 2019; and the reports of Burkina Faso, Cyprus, Latvia, Niger, Portugal and Uzbekistan at the sixty-eighth session in November and December 2019.

The Committee had discussed follow-up to articles 19 and 22 and in relation to reprisals, and had adopted decisions on 15 communications: two violations, six non-violations, two inadmissibility decisions and had discontinued five cases.  During the session, the Chair continued, the Committee had held its annual meeting with the Sub-Committee on the Prevention of Torture and discussed a draft universal protocol on non-coercive investigations, a first ever plenary meeting with the Working Group on enforced disappearance, and a joint plenary meeting with three regional human rights courts on the right to remedy for torture and ill-treatment and universal jurisdiction.  The Chair thanked national human rights institutions and civil society organizations for their contributions to the session.

Summaries of the Committee’s public meetings held during the session can be read here.

The sixty-sixth session of the Committee against Torture will take place from 23 April to 17 May 2019 at the Palais Wilson in Geneva.

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For use of the information media; not an official record