OSCE and Council of Europe support development of mechanisms to prevent torture, ill-treatment in detention in Ukraine

ODESSA, Ukraine, 2 November, 2010 - The Third East European Conference on national mechanisms to prevent torture and ill-treatment in detention, co-hosted by the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine (PCU), started in the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa today.

The two-day event looks at challenges and practical aspects of the implementation of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture in Eastern Europe and in the OSCE region as a whole. The protocol calls for the creation of national mechanisms to prevent torture in places of detention. 

The conference focuses on the role of the civil society in the implementation process. The OSCE PCU will share its four-year experience in working together with Ukrainian authorities on establishing a system of civil monitoring in detention facilities across the country.

"The OSCE PCU supports and contributes to Ukraine's efforts to create an efficient national preventive mechanism in order to secure transparency, accountability and respect for human rights in detention facilities," said Rene BeBeau, Senior Project Officer at the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine. "This is at the core of the OSCE commitments."

The OSCE PCU organized the conference jointly with the Council of Europe and the European Union as part of a programme on combating ill-treatment and impunity in South Caucasus, Moldova and Ukraine, as well as with the Kharkiv Institute for Social Research. Representatives of institutions dealing with human rights protection and torture prevention in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Georgia, Moldova, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and the United Kingdom are taking part in the conference, as are experts from the Council of Europe.

The meeting forms part of an OSCE PCU project to support Ukraine's work to prevent torture and ill-treatment in detention.