HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE AND COMMITTEE AGAINST TORTURE ADOPT DECISIONS ON INDIVIDUAL COMPLAINTS

HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE AND COMMITTEE AGAINST TORTURE

ADOPT DECISIONS ON INDIVIDUAL COMPLAINTS

GENEVA, 24 December (UN Information Service) -- Two United Nations bodies have found violations of civil and political rights and torture treaties in eight countries.

The Human Rights Committee, meeting in Geneva from 14 October to 1 November, concluded that seven of the 14 complaints from individuals it decided on revealed breaches of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.  The remaining seven complaints were considered inadmissible.  Two of the cases of violations are considered to be of particular jurisprudential interest.  They are Zheludkov v. Ukraine, related to access to medical records by prisoners; and C v. Australia, in which the Committee found that the State party's failure properly to attend to the author's deteriorating mental health violated article 7 of the Covenant.  However, it must be noted that four Committee members submitted individual opinions in the case against Ukraine, and five members did so in the case against Australia.  Attention is drawn to the remedies proposed by the Committee.

The Committee against Torture, meanwhile, adopted nine decisions on individual complaints during its meeting in Geneva from 11 to 22 November.  The Committee found a violation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in one case against Yugoslavia.  It found no violation in three cases filed against Sweden, France and Canada respectively, while five cases filed against Tunisia, Switzerland and France were declared admissible.

The case of Hajrizi v. Yugoslavia is considered to be of particular jurisprudential interest.  In that case, the Committee considered that the burning and destruction of a Roma settlement constituted acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in the sense of article 16 of the Convention, even if the acts had not been perpetrated by public officials themselves.  For the first time, and although the right to compensation is not expressly provided in the Convention for victims of acts of ill-treatment other than torture, the Committee considered that the State party should compensate the victims of such acts.

The full texts of the decisions can be found on the Web site of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/WhatsNewMain?OpenView.

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