Introduction

When negotiations for a convention aimed at combating torture took place in the early 1980s, the time was not yet ripe for the introduction of a treaty monitoring system based on preventive inspection visits to places of detention. Such a proposal, submitted by Costa Rica during the negotiations and based on a proposal by Jean Jacques Gautier, failed to gain strong support. The idea thus remained operative only at the regional level in the framework of the Council of Europe. It was not until 1992 that the (still ongoing) drafting process for a system of on-the-spot inspections at the UN level was initiated. Rather than adopting this novel mechanism, the 1984 Convention against Torture (CAT) kept to traditional supervisory techniques. As with other treaties, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), states parties to the CAT are obliged to report regularly on their efforts to implement the substantive provisions of the Convention (article 19). These reports are then considered by the CAT Committee, a body established to oversee implementation of the Convention. In addition, the CAT provides for procedures for examining complaints submitted by states parties (article 21) or by individuals (article 22). Adoption of these procedures by states parties is optional, as is the case for the ICCPR and its Optional Protocol. In addition to these well-known monitoring mechanisms, the CAT contains an entirely new inquiry provision (article 20), which permits the CAT Committee to conduct an inquiry whenever it receives ‘well-founded indications that torture is being systematically practised in the territory of a State Party’.