Ten years of Torture Prevention at the UN: Achievements and Challenges- Malcolm Evans

The Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture entered into force in June 2006 and the body established under it, the ‘SPT’ has now been working for ten years. In this its anniversary year, it is appropriate to step back and reflect on what it has achieved, and what challenges it faces.

It is the largest of the UN human rights treaty bodies, with 25 members, and has the most powerful mandate within the entire UN human rights system. Its novel approach, based on visiting places of detention and engaging in confidential dialogue sits, however, uneasily with many assumptions about effective human rights protection. In this lecture, Professor Sir Malcolm Evans, who is a member of the SPT and its Chair for the last six years will reflect on its work, set within the broader issues raised by the challenges currently being made to the effective working of the UN human rights treaty system as a whole in the light of UNGA Res 68/268 on the strengthening on the Human Rights treaty system.

Malcolm Evans is Professor of Public International Law at the University of Bristol, UK where he has taught since 1988. His areas of legal specialism include both international human rights protection and the international law of the sea. In the field of human rights his particular interests concern torture and torture prevention and the protection of religious liberty under international law, on both of which he was written extensively. He became a member of the UN Subcommittee for the Prevention of Torture (the SPT) in 2009 and since 2011 has been serving as its Chair. From 2014-2015 he was the Chairperson of the Meeting of Chairs of UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies.

This event is open to all, but to avoid disappointment, please register.