Geneva, 24 March 2015. On 19 March 2015, eminent experts and practitioners including Commissioner James L. Cavallaro, the original authors Diego Rodríguez and Claudia Martín, Alejandro Malambo, lawyer at the Colombian Commission of Jurists, and Helena Solà Martín, legal advisor of the OMCT in charge of the update, participated in the presentation at the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. The launch, which was followed by a round-table discussion, was moderated by Frank La Rue, former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression and Director of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights in Europe.
Commissioner James L. Cavallaro, Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons Deprived of Liberty, praised the new edition, which described as “an indispensable tool for practitioners but also for the Inter-American System’s operators, such as Commissioners, Judges and lawyers”. He expressed concern over increasing reports of reprisals being faced by persons deprived of liberty that denounce abuses and inadequate conditions of detention, highlighting that the new Handbook came out in a timely moment to assist victims, their legal representatives and human rights organisations to reverse this worrying trend.
Helena Solà, legal advisor of the OMCT, outlined the main achievements of the Inter-American System in the fight against torture and ill-treatment, taking stock of the progresses made in the years elapsed since the first edition, and stressed “the importance of new training materials and capacity building initiatives to tackle systemic challenges in domestic legal systems”.
Alejandro Malambo presented some of these challenges in the Colombian context, among them, the invisibility of acts of torture in criminal proceedings due to the use - at best - of other generic criminal offenses instead, such as injuries and sexual abuse. The Handbook “is a worthwhile tool for anti-torture litigators given the wide array of situations it covers under the material scope of Article 5.2 of the American Convention on Human Rights”.
Finally, the authors of the first edition stressed the importance of compiling and systematizing procedural and substantive rules to successfully lodge complaints with the Inter-American Human Rights System and the fundamental role of Law schools in building up the legal anti-torture expertise to address fundamental concerns such as the implementation gap and the circle of impunity.
The new edition of the OMCT Handbook Series, that has been possible due to the support of the European Commission, Hans Wilsdorf Foundation and Oak Foundation, is available at: http://www.omct.org/monitoring-protection-mechanisms/reports-and-publications/2014/11/d22956/. To request a printed copy, please send an e-mail message to Helena Solà (hs@omct.org) with the subject “Handbook”, specifying which volume of the Series you would like to order free of charge (1, 2, 3 or 4).
OMCT International Secretariat
For further information, please contact:
Helena Solà Martín: + 41 22 809 4939 / hs@omct.org
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