Following last month's press release from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture (SPT) announced it would visit six countries, including Australia and Nauru, to inspect places of detention.
Ahead of the visit, Professor Sir Malcolm Evans, Chair of the SPT and Deputy Director of the Human Rights Implementation Centre (HRIC) at the University of Bristol Law School, was quoted extensively in an article published by The Guardian on 4 July. In the article, titled “UN inspectors primed for 'unfettered access' to Australian detention centres”, Professor Evans spoke of the need for unannounced access to any place of detention where people might be deprived of their liberty.
Sites of inspection could include prisons, police stations, psychiatric hospitals, social care institutions, and immigration facilities.
It will be the SPT’s first visit to Australia to scrutinise places of detention since Australia ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT) in December 2017. Under the Optional Protocol States parties are obliged to set up an independent national preventive mechanism with a mandate to make unannounced visits to any place of detention to consider how best to prevent torture.
In an interview with Australia’s ABC Radio last week, Professor Evans discussed the need to be strategic during the SPT's visit, emphasising the importance of the establishment of a national mechanism:
“We will naturally have a particular interest at a slightly more systemic level with the establishment of the national preventive mechanism, because this is the key element of the protocol; we can only visit now and then, but an effective national mechanism will be doing this job on a day in, day out basis, and we’ll be liaising with it once it's in place. So it’s a hugely important thing, and we’re very keen to work with Australia to get a good mechanism in place as quickly as possible.”