SLP 11 (2016)

SUMMARY

Preventive Mechanisms under the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture

The book describes and analyses the mechanisms of protection against torture developed under the United Nations Convention against Torture, and particularly its Optional Protocol. Since the mechanisms of the Optional Protocol were inspired by the European Convention against Torture, developed by the Council of Europe, the book also dedicates one chapter to the European system. There are two kinds of instruments based on the Optional Protocol, the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and the so-called national preventive mechanisms. While the first one was created by the Optional Protocol, the latter are only supposed to be created by the State Parties to it. The book is a culmination of a conference that was held at the Faculty of Law, Charles University on September 26, 2016 and its authors are academics as well as practitioners from the Czech national preventive mechanism, the Office of the Ombudsperson, the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, and the Office of the Czech government’s representative in front of the European Court of Human Rights. Following the introduction by Pavel Šturma , there is an article that discusses the legitimacy of national human rights institutions. Harald Scheu , its author, claims that various institutions, organizations, activists and so on, can play an important role. He examines the potential of the national human rights institutions from the perspective of connecting the international and national dimensions of human rights protection. In particular, he deals with the Paris principles. Based on the example of the Optional protocol based bodies, he claims that both sides may benefit from the professional cooperation between international and national monitoring mechanisms. The second chapter is divided into two articles. The first one was written by Milan Lipovský and introduces the system of protection against torture, describes the main bodies, their composition and the form of visits to detention facilities. Since the detention facilities are the most susceptible places for violations of the Convention against Torture to occur, the Optional Protocol focuses on them and allows both the Subcommittee and the national preventive mechanisms to carry out visits in them. The second article was written by Ondřej Vala . He focuses especially on the national preventive mechanism in the Czech Republic, the Ombudsperson, as well as on the reasons why the Public Defender of Rights should be the National Human Rights Institution. The third chapter deals with practical issues of the system of the Optional Procotol. Lukáš Machoň discusses the threefold mandate of the Subcommittee that is authorized

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