United Nations experts on the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) will visit Liberia and three other countries in 2018 to assess the treatment of people deprived of their liberty, and measures taken for their protection against torture and ill-treatment.
The other three countries are visit Belize, Kyrgyzstan and Poland.
The decision to visit these States was taken at the November session of the SPT.
In June, the subcommittee also identified Burundi, Portugal and Uruguay as other states it ought to visit in 2018.
The exact dates of the visits have however not been announced yet.
Under the SPT’s mandate, members may make unannounced visits to any places where people are or may be deprived of their liberty, including prisons, police stations, centres for migrants, security services, interrogation facilities and psychiatric hospitals.
In addition, the SPT also provides advice to national authorities on the establishment of a monitoring body, known as a National Preventive Mechanism (NPM), that monitors all places where people are or could be deprived of their liberty.
In 2017, the SPT visited Niger, Morocco, Rwanda (currently suspended), Hungary, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Bolivia, Mongolia, Panama, and Spain, and will visit Burkina Faso next month.
