Prevention of torture and inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment - instrument for human rights protection in european framework

摘要

Europe, at the beginning of this century, looks anxious and troubled in translating its own history and past, of thought and culture, into a present able to speak the language of equality, able to build social cohesion and to offer spaces for confrontation of the differences. It is this fearful Europe that responds to the differences and the contradictions given by its expansion towards its central and eastern countries with the strictest tools, built in its history: with the tool of the deprivation of liberty, with the tool of penalty. After the dramatic world conflict, the new Europe translated the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights into a treaty in order to give effectiveness to the principle enounced in the Declaration. The European Convention for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms (ECHR) was approved in 1950. At first signed and ratified by the original nucleus of States that started the Council of Europe, the Convention, in the first years of the 90s, saw the progressive adhesion of the countries of central and eastern Europe. The task of ensuring compliance with the ECHR was initially entrusted to the European Commission and European Court of Human Rights - two bodies, which were merged into a single Court in 1998. The Court examines complaints lodged by individuals, and occasionally by States; the end result is a legally binding judgment as to whether or not a state has violated its obligations under the ECHR. Over time, it became apparent that reliance on a reactive judicial mechanism was not sufficient to ensure compliance with the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Consequently, a proactive non-judicial mechanism based on visits to places of deprivation of liberty was set up. This is the aim of the European Convention for the prevention of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, adopted in 1987. To date, this Convention has been ratified by 45 member States of the Council of Europe. The article examines the effectiveness of such a Convention, fifteen years after it came into force, in the new general context given by the significant increase of the number of States party of it and in a general context characterised by a huge increase of prison population.