Public meeting on the Italian Parliament's Prospects of Ratification and Implementation of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture (OPCAT), (University of Padua, 26 March 2010)

Opening of the meeting
Markus Jaeger
Head of Legislative Support and National Human Rights Structures Division, Directorate General of Human Rights and Legal Affairs, Council of Europe

Thank you so much Marco.

Dear colleagues and friends from Italy, dear colleagues and friends from all corners of Europe, I am, needless to say, extremely touched and honoured to be here with you today and to have you with us coming from Rome and other cities in Italy, and coming from, as I said earlier on, many places of that greater Europe of forty-seven member states of which Italy is a major member.

Forty-seven member states that go from Iceland to Turkey, and go from Portugal to the east coast of Russia.

These forty-seven member states, this greater Europe, have engaged in three major institutions of development for the protection of Human Rights in the past decades. The first development is the one that tends towards the institution of a National Ombudsman, since 1985 the Council of Europe in resolutions and recommendations which were accepted and co-drafted by the Italian government has decided that all member states should have a national Ombudsman. Today forty of the fortyseven member states have a national Ombudsman, small countries like San Marino, Monaco and Liechtenstein, for instance, don't have one, Monaco is going to have one very soon. Two big countries have no national Ombudsman, Turkey and Italy. Since 1997 the same sort of decision was made, including by the Italian government, in Strasbourg to call upon all the member states to have an independent national human rights commission or institution, which is not the same thing as an Ombudsman.

Today thirty-five of our member states have such an institution, a few big countries don't have one: Turkey, Italy are among them. On the United Nations level something was done which was champion, which was advocated for more than twenty years by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, by the CPT, which has an Italian chairman, and for more than twenty years the CPT has said: you should have an independent national mechanism to visit places of detention and deprivation of liberty, so as to effectively prevent ill-treatment from happening. The United Nations have made a convention on this, the so-called OPCAT convention, of our fortyseven member states twenty-six have ratified the OPCAT and will have such national mechanism, Italy is not among them. So we have got three major developments for the protection of human rights all deemed essential and all deemed friendly, because we're speaking of national bodies, we're not speaking of an addition of international bodies, we're speaking of an Italian body in Italy to help Italy, and these three trains have been missed by Italy.

Now there is irony in us being here, because the irony is not only that Mauro Palma, the president of the CPT, eminent president of the CPT is an Italian, in a country where there is no National Preventive Mechanism against Torture, the irony is also that our friends from Padova, Antonio Papisca, Marco Mascia, Stefano Valenti and the team of the Interdepartmental centre of human rights and the rights of peoples, with Paolo De Stefani and others I've seen in the room, they have become over the last two and a half years our strongest allies in working together in organising the networking of all these existing bodies of what I'm speaking, so all these bodies come from all over Europe to work here in Padova, the Ombudsmen come to a country where there is no Ombudsman, the National Human Rights Commissions come to work together in Padova, in a country where there is no National Human Rights Commission and the NPMs have come for the first time, the last two days for the first time together from all over Europe to work here in Padova where there is no NPM and not even the ratification of the OPCAT.

So we are here together today for two reasons: first, we try to understand, we would like to understand why this beautiful, big, important country that everybody wants to go to for the pleasure of being here that is at the cradle of our civilization in Europe, is missing these three trains or chooses not to jump on them, there must be reasons for that and we would like to understand, and the second reason is not only would we like to understand why this problem exists, but we would like to offer friendly, respectful help to those of you who think you should perhaps hop on one or two or three of these important trains and catch up with the paneuropean developments. And we would like to see if we can agree on ways and, I say again, respectfully, in a friendly way, work together, if you so wish, towards the possibility for Italy, if Italy so wishes, to catch up, because there has been some delay now, and to jump on this train and take the place which Italy has as a big European nation, which many people look upon in this concert of European nations.

I should try to act that you have more and more developed relationships on government level with another big, big European country that is part of Council of Europe and which is Russia. Let me point out that Russia has a national Ombudsman, Russia does not have yet an independent national human rights commission and Russia has not ratified OPCAT or has an NPM but they have started setting up National Preventive Mechanism against Torture which is not perfect but they have tackled the problem, at least. Now, it is just an example to say: it is hard to understand why this country does not want to engage into this and I'm sure that my friends from all over Europe, myself and the [omissis] of my team will better understand the reasons and perhaps the possibilities to change that state of things. Thank you very much and very much looking for to our meeting here and I thank you for the confidence and the friendliness that you show to us by accepting to gather with us here.