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Monitoring protection mechanisms / Events / 2001 / September

WCAR: OMCT Plenary speech in Durban

World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance
Durban (South Africa), August 31– September 7 2001


Ms. Chairperson,

Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance are some of the major factors leading to torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, summary executions and forced disappearances.

During the different sessions of the preparatory committees for this conference and on the occasion of regional NGO meetings, the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) either individually or more frequently in close collaboration with about 50 NGO members of the international Caucus on criminal justice, has worked towards obtaining that these particularly grave and sensitive questions be treated with the highest degree of priority deserved. Unfortunately, we have to acknowledge that neither the text of the declaration nor that of the programme of action fulfil our expectations. We hope that the drafting committees will be able to integrate in the corresponding paragraphs the majority of propositions issued by the NGO Forum International Caucus on Criminal Justice and by the Thematic Commission on the Administration of Justice and the Criminal System. The Declaration and the Program of Action that will be adopted must reinforce the existing norms and should not in any case be interpreted as impairing the obligations deriving from international instruments.

Ms. Chairperson, besides the content of the texts adopted, my organization gives great importance to the follow-up mechanisms which will be set up. We wish to see, as it is emphasised in the Declaration adopted here on 1st September, national institutions determined to play a greater role particularly in the framework of a rapid alert process.

We also fully support the innovating proposals presented on 3rd September aiming at creating new or reinforced synergies between the United Nations agencies and the institutional and conventional mechanisms. However, these efforts alone are not sufficient to ensure an efficient implementation of the Programme of Action.

This is the reason why we call on the participant states to this Conference to create a permanent Observatory composed of eminent and independent experts and to give this Observatory every necessary means, in human and material resources, as it is put forward in the project of a Programme of Action, for it to follow up the implementation of the Programme of Action. We expect this Observatory to reinforce all the activities of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and of the different institutional and conventional mechanisms.

Finally, Ms. Chairperson, we ask that NGOs collaborate closely and actively with this Observatory by providing it with the relevant information and by requiring its intervention when necessary.

Thank you, Ms. Chairperson,



Durban, 4th September 2001
Eric SOTTAS, Director

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Date: September 13, 2001
Activity: Monitoring Protection Mechanisms
Type: Events

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