“European States should step up their efforts to completely eradicate any form of torture and ill-treatment”, said Mykola Gnatovskyy, President of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), on the occasion of the publication of the Committee's 2019 report on Thursday 28 May (https://bit.ly/2Ai6cz6 ).
“There has been undeniable progress since the CPT was set up in 1989”, he says, but “nowadays, when the prohibition of torture and other forms of ill-treatment is questioned as part of an attempt to challenge human rights and democracy, the CPT’s role is more important than ever”.
Among the challenges, Mykola Gnatovskyy notes: “complicated issues concerning immigration detention, involuntary treatment of psychiatric patients in social care homes, prison overcrowding, detention of juveniles”.
“One of the new ways of increasing its impact lies in the enhanced co-operation with the European Union”, he says, welcoming “several contact meetings” with “various EU officials” in 2019. The fact that the CPT's work is increasingly mentioned as a frame of reference for EU action is another positive sign, he notes, mentioning FRONTEX, the European Commission's Directorate General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR) and the discussions for EU accession to the European Convention on Human Rights. Another significant example is the fact that the report of the Fundamental Rights Agency entitled ‘Criminal detention conditions in the European Union: rules and reality’ refers to the ‘much more detailed and comprehensive work’ of the CPT. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)