8 United Nations Convention Against Torture and its Optional Protocol for believing that he or she would be in danger of being subjected to torture. Since many victims of torture flee their country and seek refuge in other countries, the principle of non-​refoulement constitutes an important means of protecting vulnerable groups. If States were to respect this important principle properly, many cases of torture could be prevented. It is interesting to note that the vast majority of individual complaints under Article 22 CAT so far decided by the Committee against Torture relate to the principle of non-​refoulement.42 In addition to these measures aimed at preventing torture, a second category of State obligations relates to the right of victims of torture to a remedy and adequate reparation for the harm suffered. Article 13 provides that every victim of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment has the right to complain to a competent domestic authority which shall promptly and impartially examine every allegation and ensure that victims and witnesses are adequately protected against intimidation and reprisals. If domestic remedies are not effective, Article 22 provides for the possibility for victims to submit an individual complaint against the State party concerned to the Committee against Torture. As mentioned above, this individual complaints procedure is, however, optional and only sixty-​eight out of the 162 States parties to CAT have made the respective declaration in accordance with Article 22(1).43 Victims of torture also have the right to adequate reparation for the harm suffered, which consists primarily of fair and adequate monetary compensation as well as medical, psychological, and other types of rehabilitation (Article 14). The third category of State obligations relates to the use of domestic criminal law against perpetrators of torture and constitutes a special raison d’être for the entire Convention. First of all, States are under an obligation to ensure that all acts of torture are offences under their criminal law punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature (Article 4). This obligation of States parties to criminalize torture is modelled on earlier counterterrorism treaties and was at the time of drafting of the Convention new and almost revolutionary in the context of a typical human rights treaty. However, thirty years after the entry into force of the Convention, we realize that only a minority of States parties in fact fully complied with this important legal obligation. In addition to including torture as a crime in their domestic criminal codes, States parties have an obligation to establish their jurisdiction on the basis of the territoriality, flag, active and passive nationality as well as the universal jurisdiction principles (Article 5). In other words, no safe havens for perpetrators of torture shall continue to exist in our contemporary global world. Wherever a perpetrator of torture is travelling or residing, the authorities of the respective State have an obligation to arrest him or her, to make a preliminary inquiry into the facts, and to decide in accordance with the principle ‘aut dedere aut iudicare’ whether to extradite the person to his or her country of origin, residence, or commission of the act of torture, or to prosecute the person before their own domestic criminal courts (Articles 5 to 9). Unfortunately, very few countries have so far complied with these obligations, but a few encouraging cases show that the awareness is growing that safe havens for perpetrators of torture, whether police officers, prison guards, military commanders, or Heads of State or Government of States responsible for systematic practices of torture, are no longer permissible.44   See below Art 3, § 2 and Annex A7b, Figure 1.   See the survey of selected cases below Art 5. 42 44    See below Art 22, § 4. 43