Recommendations for strengthening detention monitoring discussed at OSCE-led meeting in Chişinău
CHIŞINĂU, 1 December 2011 – A set of recommendations on how to strengthen local commissions which monitor places of detention in Moldova was presented at a roundtable meeting held by the OSCE Mission to Moldova and the nongovernmental Moldovan Institute on Human Rights in Chişinău today.
The recommendations are based on the findings of an OSCE-led project on building the capacity of detention monitoring commissions and raising awareness of their work.
“Civil monitoring of places of detention can be a powerful mechanism for torture prevention, as we have seen in other OSCE participating States,” said Jan Plešinger, the Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission to Moldova, in his opening remarks. “The Moldovan state took a very positive step forward on this issue with the passage of the 2008 Law on Civil Control of Places of Detention, which provided local monitoring commissions with a powerful mandate. However, more should be done to make these commissions fully operational.”
Vanu Jereghi, the Executive Director of the Moldovan Institute for Human Rights, presented the project’s findings, which showed consistent and competent monitoring in some regions and uneven development of the commissions in others.
“The government needs to pay more attention to the regions where commissions have not yet been established, even though the law was passed three years ago,” he said.
Anatolie Munteanu, a Parliamentary Advocate and Director of the Centre for Human Rights, stressed the importance of co-ordination between the local commissions and central mechanisms, such as the National Preventive Mechanism, established under the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture.
The meeting, which included members of local commissions from across the country, government officials and representatives from the National Preventive Mechanism, civil society and international community, also focused on the need to change legal provisions on the establishment of commissions to ensure the transparency of their appointments.