PRI statement to the OSCE reiterates importance of multi-layered monitoring of places of detention to end torture
This week, PRI delivered a statement to the OSCE’s annual human rights conference (the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting) in Warsaw on the monitoring of places of detention and the role of preventive monitoring.
In particular, the statement stressed that a combination of preventive work by National Preventive Mechanisms (looking at more general risk factors) and reactive monitoring by civil society (taking up and reporting on individual cases of ill-treatment) is both necessary and ideal for increasing the effectiveness of monitoring and bringing an end to the practice of torture and ill-treatment in places of detention.
It also highlights the need for:
- monitoring visits to be frequent and unannounced, with monitors at liberty to interview inmates confidentially and without the presence of prison guards;
- close cooperation and coordination between regional monitoring boards;
- the establishment of networks of human rights NGOs to allow consideration of all data generated by monitoring boards and identify patterns of abuse in specific places of detention or failures in the system as a whole.