This book is about the prohibition and the prevention of torture. Its purposes are twofold. The first is to give a frank account of what the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) has been able to achieve over the first 15 years of its existence. This also involves being honest about what the SPT has not been able to achieve too, and – more importantly – the reasons for this. The second purpose, and perhaps the more significant, is to expose some of the myths which permit torture to continue to flourish, despite the plethora of international prohibitions that surround it. To that end, the first part of the book considers what, legally speaking, torture is. The background to the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture (OPCAT) is presented and the practical working of the SPT and how it seeks to prevent torture and ill-treatment is explored. The second part of the book draws on the author’s personal experience and aims to explore the challenges of working preventively, by considering examples of the SPT’s work. This is used to highlight some of the less predictable barriers to effective torture prevention. The book concludes with reflections on what could be done to make torture prevention more effective.
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