A/73/207 (c) Rehabilitation 25. In many States, specialized centres and services for the support and rehabilitation of victims of torture are scarce, difficult to access or non -existent. In spite of their obligations, most States provide no or only inadequate funding for such services. The United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture requires annual contributions from States of at least $12 million, but that amount has not been reached once since 2003 (A/72/278, para. 26). 8 (d) Preventive safeguards 26. The risk of torture and ill-treatment is greatest in the first hours of custody and during incommunicado detention. 9 Therefore, preventive safeguards must be implemented immediately after arrest, including the notification of a third party, access to a lawyer and a physician and the furnishing of the detainee with information on their rights, available remedies and the reasons for arrest. In many States, either such safeguards are not adequately guaranteed under the law or their effective implementation is hindered by delays, physical inaccessibility, a lack of medical staff, public defenders and interpreters, poor infrastructure and means of communication or transport, and the failure to provide for complaints procedures and protection against reprisals. 27. Significantly more needs to be done in many States to properly train and equip law enforcement and investigative personnel in order to ensure the use of noncoercive interviewing techniques (A/71/298) and avoid the excessive use of force in places of detention and in the broader context of law enforcement operations (A/72/178, para. 46). 10 (e) New equipment and technologies 28. The use of new equipment and technologies can help to prevent torture and ill treatment and hold its perpetrators accountable, for example by minimizing the use of force, enabling systematic video monitoring of investigative interviewing and replacing confession-based criminal investigations with improved forensic and other scientific processes. The emergence, however, of new types of weapons, equipment and technologies may also raise significant concerns about their possible misuse. States must therefore review and regulate the development, acquisition, trade in and use of new weapons, equipment and technologies in their national law. That includes a duty to determine whether the use of a new type of weapon, equipment or technology would, in some or all circumstances, violate the absolute prohibition of torture and ill-treatment (A/72/178, para. 59). International mechanisms should be encouraged to develop guidance to assist States in that regard. Specific attention should be paid to so-called less lethal weapons, including electric shock devices such as tasers and stun belts, which with growing frequency are used in an excessive manner and in inappropriate contexts, but also to the possible implications of increasingly automated, or even autonomous, technologies, particularly with regard to questions of accountability for harmful or coercive measures taken without meaningful human control. __________________ 8 9 10 8/23 See also https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Torture/UNVFVT/Br ochureUNVFVT.pdf. Richard Carver and Lisa Handley, eds., Does Torture Prevention Work? (Liverpool, United Kingdom, Liverpool University Press, 2016). Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (art. 10). 18-12051