The Human Rights Implementation Centre has a very practical approach and most of our work has a focus towards implementing human rights standards at the domestic, regional and international levels. Included in this is our work around OPCAT and torture prevention more broadly.
In September 2011 the Centre hosted a high-level event which brought together international experts from the UN treaty bodies, OHCHR, governments, NHRIs and Civil Society to consider specifically 'Implementation of UN Treaty Body Concluding Observations: The Role of National and Regional Mechanisms in Europe'. The outcome of this Conference has been included on the OHCHR’s website on its work on the Treaty Body Strengthening Process. Indeed, Members of the Centre have been very involved in the Dublin II process on Treaty Body Strengthening and have attended regular meetings throughout the process.
In December 2011, staff from the HRIC were expert consultants in a Partnership in Governance between the AU and the EU on the Freedom of Expression. In collaboration with our African partners, we wrote expert papers and organized a two day event in Tunisia, in which experts and practitioners from across the two regions took part in an Expert Working-Group Meeting. This fed into a report produced by us and our African associates, giving practical recommendations for deeper future collaboration between Africa and Europe on this theme.
The Centre has also set up and maintains a website on the activity of human rights visiting bodies, which provides links to all the reports generated by such bodies. This is a very practical tool that may be used by others researching human rights issues in a state, or planning visits, etc. The UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture has a link to this database from its website.
In addition, through our work with and for national human rights institutions (NHRIs), as well as the OHCHR’s National Institutions unit, we actively contribute to the process of looking for strategies to implement human rights standards. (See our NHRI work) Notably, this has included a two day conference in Cairo in December 2012 on the role of NHRIs in post-conflict situations.