UN group on torture visits Nigeria next year

SPT’s role is to prevent and eliminate torture and cruelty, inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment of detainees. It works with national governments that have ratified the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture (OPCAT).The SPT in a statement yesterday by Mr. Oluseyi Soremekun, National Information Officer, United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) quoted the […]

SPT’s role is to prevent and eliminate torture and cruelty, inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment of detainees. It works with national governments that have ratified the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture (OPCAT).
The SPT in a statement yesterday by Mr. Oluseyi Soremekun, National Information Officer, United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) quoted the Chairperson of OPCAT Malcolm Evans that the UN will also conduct missions next year to Ecuador, Malta, Netherlands and Togo.
In addition, the SPT will also conduct broad range visits to places of detention, as well as short missions that will focus at advising the national authorities on how to best comply with OPCAT obligations.
“For the SPT, the key to preventing torture and ill-treatment lies in building constructive relations between national and international bodies within the OPCAT framework,” Evans said.
He explained that the SPT is devising more ways of fulfilling its convention mandate which not only grants it unrestricted access to all places of detention in countries that have ratified the OPCAT, but also call on it to work closely with national, regional and other international mechanisms involved in the prevention of torture.
“The SPT is at the centre of this international framework of independent torture prevention mechanisms and we need to become ever more closely involved in encouraging and supporting all those involved in this work at whatever level,” Mr Evans said.