CTI 2020 Annual Report : Challenges and lessons from Covid-19

CTI’s 2020 Annual Report highlights a number of achievements and activities over this complex year.

We are especially proud to announce that [despite Covid-19] UNCAT was the most ratified human rights treaty in 2020, accounting for one-third of all human rights treaty ratifications. We congratulate Oman and St Kitts and Nevis as the Convention’s newest States parties, pushing the total to 171 State parties by the end of 2020.

CTI Core State Ambassadors to the UN in Geneva, Chile, Denmark, Fiji, Ghana, Indonesia and Morocco

The 2020 Annual Report gives special focus to four areas of our work:

  • Applicability of the UN Convention against Torture and other ill-treatment (UNCAT) in State responses to Covid-19, covering such areas as enforcement of lockdowns and other restrictions, mobile justice systems, and decongestion and other measures to keep prisoners safe
  • Policing and law enforcement, including addressing racially motivated excessive use of force that was witnessed in a number of countries worldwide
  • Anti-torture legislative and regulatory frameworks, in particular supporting States to craft domestic laws that are compatible with UNCAT
  • Benefits of ratifying UNCAT and reaching global consensus on the treaty and its standards

We also launched our new website, which has a number of new features to improve the user experience and will allow government officials and other interlocutors of CTI to more easily search and access our resources, advice, news and events.

Despite a complex year, we continued our bilateral and multilateral discussions with a wide number of countries and partners on the importance and relevance of the UN Convention against Torture, and as the Covid-19 pandemic progressed, the relevance of the Convention became clearer. You’ll find all our 2020 activities in our Annual Report.

Dr Alice Edwards, Head of the CTI Secretariat

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