Committee against Torture Discusses Reports on Follow-up to Concluding Observations, Individual Communications, and Reprisals

The Committee against Torture today discussed reports on follow-up to concluding observations, individual communications, and reprisals under the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Bakhtiyar Tuzmukhamedov, Committee Rapporteur on follow-up to concluding observations under article 19 of the Convention, presenting his report, said that since the last progress report to the Committee, follow-up reports had been received from Tajikistan, Belgium, and Lithuania. Several countries had not met the deadlines for submission of follow-up information: Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Benin, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Holy See, Indonesia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Syria, Togo, Yemen and Zambia. During the period under review, the Committee received no alternative follow-up reports from non-governmental organizations or other stakeholders in relation to the follow-up replies submitted by States parties.

During the period under review, Mr. Tuzmukhamedov said he continued assessing the information provided by States under the follow-up procedure, to monitor whether the issues identified by the Committee had been addressed and whether the information provided responded to the Committee’s concluding observations. Communications sent by the Rapporteur for follow-up to concluding observations were available on the Committee’s web page. During the period, none of the follow-up replies submitted by States parties addressed the remaining of the Committee’s recommendations. The Rapporteur encouraged States parties to make use of the dedicated web page for the follow-up procedure. All relevant documents, including the recommendations identified for follow-up by the Committee, the information submitted by States parties, the correspondence with concerned States parties and the public reports submitted by national human rights institutions, non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders, were available on the web page.

Committee Expert Huawen Liu, Rapporteur on follow-up to communications presented under article 22 (individual complaints procedure), said the Committee had considered four communications and submitted follow-up observations for each. The communications concerned cases against Switzerland and Morocco. For the case against Switzerland, the Committee decided to close the follow-up dialogue with a note of satisfactory resolution. For two of the cases against Morocco, follow-up comments and observations demonstrated a lack of implementation and the Committee therefore decided to keep the follow-up dialogue ongoing and to consider further steps. For one of the cases against Morocco, the follow-up comments demonstrated full implementation and therefore the Committee decided to close the follow-up dialogue with a note of satisfactory resolution.

The Committee Rapporteur on follow-up to reprisals, Ana Racu, said that no new allegations of reprisals had been recorded by the Committee since it had last met. Reviewing cases before the Committee, she referred to two cases. The first was a case against Morocco, which concerned a complainant released from detention as per the Committee’s request. Through his release, the alleged violations had ceased. The second case referred to allegations of reprisals in Cyprus against a complainant which had not been answered by the State party. His allegations regarding the situation in detention were being examined by national authorities in Cyprus. Since the last session, the Secretariat had not reported any new allegations of reprisals in the context of the reporting procedures.

Summaries of the public meetings of the Committee can be found  here, and webcasts of the public meetings can be found  here. The programme of work of the Committee’s seventy-fifth session and other documents related to the session can be found  here.

The Committee will next meet in public on Friday, 25 November at 10 a.m. to close its seventy-fifth session.

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