CPT: 12TH GENERAL REPORT 13 CPT membership 23. The European Committee for the prevention of torture learned with sadness of the death on 3 June 2002 of Claude NICOLAY, Deputy State Prosecutor of Luxembourg. He was one of the CPT’s very first members and its President from 1993 until the end of his second term of office as a Committee member in 1997. Claude Nicolay was deeply committed to human rights and worked with determination for their protection. The CPT pays tribute to this outstanding man who did so much to promote the implementation of the European Convention for the prevention of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. 24. Three new CPT members took up office in 2001: Mr Laszlo CSETNEKY (in respect of Hungary), Mr Jean-Pierre RESTELLINI (Switzerland) and Mr Eric SVANIDZE (Georgia). Further, the following members were re-elected: Ms Silvia CASALE (United Kingdom), Mrs Emilia DRUMEVA (Bulgaria), Mrs Renate KICKER (Austria), Mr Ole Vedel RASMUSSEN (Denmark), Mr Pierre SCHMIT (Luxembourg) and Mr Pieter Reinhard STOFFELEN (Netherlands). Moreover, since the beginning of 2002, Mr Roger BEAUVOIS (France), Mr Thomas HAMMARBERG (Sweden) and Ms Günsel KOPTAGEL-İLAL (Turkey) have been elected to seats on the Committee and Mr Andres LEHTMETS (Estonia), Mrs Ingrid LYCKE ELLINGSEN (Norway) and Mr Volodymyr YEVINTOV (Ukraine) have been re-elected. At the time of publication of this report, the CPT has 37 members.1 25. During its March 2002 meeting, the CPT elected a new Bureau for a period of two years. Ms Silvia CASALE, a British criminologist, was re-elected for a second term of office as President of the Committee. Mr Andres LEHTMETS, an Estonian psychiatrist, was elected as First Vice-President and Mr Zdeněk HÁJEK, a Czech lawyer, as Second VicePresident. 1 See Appendix 3A for the list of CPT members. Abriged curricula vitae of the members can be obtained from the CPT Secretariat and are posted on its website (www.cpt.coe.int). 26. In the course of 2001 and to date in 2002, the following members of the CPT have left the Committee on the expiry of their terms of office: Ms Gisela PERREN-KINGLER (elected in respect of Switzerland), Mr Safa REISOĞLU (Turkey), Mr Davor STRINOVIĆ (Croatia) and Mr Ivan ZAKINE (France). The CPT wishes to place on record its gratitude for their contributions to the Committee’s work. 27. The effectiveness of the CPT will ultimately depend on the quality of its membership. Consequently, the Committee welcomes the additional steps taken by the Parliamentary Assembly in 2001, with a view to ensuring that the lists of candidates for membership which are forwarded to the Committee of Ministers are in conformity with the needs of the CPT. Although there has been a slight increase over the last year, it remains the case that the number of members with a medical background is not on a par with that of lawyers in the Committee. The CPT hopes that it will be possible to remedy this situation and, in particular, to increase the number of medical members with relevant forensic experience. In this connection, the CPT wishes to stress that, in view of the Committee’s mandate, it requires doctors with forensic experience, not forensic scientists. It would also be desirable to have more members with practical experience of police and prison work. The proportion of women among the CPT’s membership (10 out of 37) remains low. The Committee therefore hopes that future lists of candidates for membership will include more suitablyqualified women. The paramount concern is a highly qualified membership, in terms of professional expertise and empirical experience. Consequently, the question of gender should not predominate over qualification. In the present context, it is reasonable to give preference to female candidates only in the event of equal qualifications.