European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the Committee (CPT)

After the European Convention on Human Rights, the Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment is widely regarded as being one of the most important of the Council of Europe's treaties. It has been ratified by all 47 of the Council of Europe's member states, and ratification of the Convention has been a pre-condition for all states who have joined the Council of Europe in the last few years. It establishes the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (the CPT).

Read the full text of the Convention here.

The Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) works by a system of visits. These visits may be announced or unannounced ( so-called "ad hoc"). The power of the CPT to make unannounced visits to any place of detention is unique, and is its key strength.Typically, a visit by a CPT delegation involves visiting prisons, immigration detention centers, children's homes and psychiatric hospitals. The CPT has also visited social care homes for people with mental disabilities - see the reports of the visits to  Romania (1995) Estonia (1997 and 1999), Hungary (1997), Bulgaria (1999), Slovakia (2000). The CPT has for the first time recently visited a private psychiatric establishment (see the report of the visit to Switzerland (2001), available in French, German and Italian). After a CPT delegation visits a country, it writes a report to the government. These "substantive sections" of the CPT annual reports are available in various languages as well as English and French. For various translations, click on the language: Albanian, Armenian, Azeri, Croatian, Estonian, German, Georgian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian

During the visit the CPT meets officials at ministerial and local level, and also holds meetings with NGOs which are engaged in human rights monitoring. In addition to publishing reports of country visits, the CPT issues guidance on how different categories of people should be treated. One of these sections is dedicated to the treatment of people who are detained in psychiatric institutions. The CPT encourages local NGOs to send relevant information which could be useful during their visits.  MDAC regularly sends information to the CPT on countries within our target region. If you have information which you think would be helpful for the CPT in relation to the human rights of people with intellectual and psycho-social (mental health) disabilities, please send it to MDAC.

The CPT Standards
This document details some of the substantive issues which the CPT pursues when carrying out visits to places of deprivation of liberty. The Committee hopes in this way to give a clear advance indication to national authorities of its views regarding the manner in which persons deprived of their liberty ought to be treated and, more generally, to stimulate discussion on such matters. The section on mental disability can be found at pages 28 to 33.

Go to the CPT homepage

Click here to read the Reports on CPT visits

Search for CPT reports and all public statements made by the CPT using the CPT's database

View the Signatories and ratifications of the Torture Convention 

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