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SUMMARY
Preventive Mechanisms under the Optional Protocol
to the Convention Against Torture
The book describes and analyses the mechanisms of protection against torture
developed under the United Nations Convention against Torture, and particularly its
Optional Protocol. Since the mechanisms of the Optional Protocol were inspired by
the European Convention against Torture, developed by the Council of Europe, the
book also dedicates one chapter to the European system.
There are two kinds of instruments based on the Optional Protocol, the Subcommittee
on Prevention of Torture and the so-called national preventive mechanisms. While
the first one was created by the Optional Protocol, the latter are only supposed to be
created by the State Parties to it.
The book is a culmination of a conference that was held at the Faculty of Law,
Charles University on September 26, 2016 and its authors are academics as well
as practitioners from the Czech national preventive mechanism, the Office of the
Ombudsperson, the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, and
the Office of the Czech government’s representative in front of the European Court
of Human Rights.
Following the introduction by
Pavel Šturma
, there is an article that discusses the
legitimacy of national human rights institutions.
Harald Scheu
, its author, claims that
various institutions, organizations, activists and so on, can play an important role. He
examines the potential of the national human rights institutions from the perspective
of connecting the international and national dimensions of human rights protection.
In particular, he deals with the Paris principles. Based on the example of the Optional
protocol based bodies, he claims that both sides may benefit from the professional
cooperation between international and national monitoring mechanisms.
The
second chapter
is divided into two articles. The first one was written by
Milan
Lipovský
and introduces the system of protection against torture, describes the main
bodies, their composition and the form of visits to detention facilities. Since the
detention facilities are the most susceptible places for violations of the Convention
against Torture to occur, the Optional Protocol focuses on them and allows both the
Subcommittee and the national preventive mechanisms to carry out visits in them.
The second article was written by
Ondřej Vala
.
He focuses especially on the national
preventive mechanism in the Czech Republic, the Ombudsperson, as well as on the
reasons why the Public Defender of Rights should be the National Human Rights
Institution.
The
third chapter
deals with practical issues of the system of the Optional Procotol.
Lukáš Machoň
discusses the threefold mandate of the Subcommittee that is authorized