EN_CPT_AR.book Page 7 Monday, October 25, 2010 5:14 PM Activities during the period 1 August 2009 to 31 July 2010 Activities during the period 1 August 2009 to 31 July 2010 Visits 1. The CPT organised twenty visits totalling 159 days during the twelve-month period covered by this General Report. Eight of the visits (totalling 96 days) formed part of the CPT’s annual programme of periodic visits and ten (58 days) were ad hoc visits which the Committee considered were required by the circumstances. The remaining two visits were carried out under an arrangement for monitoring the treatment and conditions of detention of persons serving sentences imposed by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Basic details of all these visits (countries, dates, places of detention visited) are provided in Appendix 7. 2. The CPT intends to continue with an annual programme of some ten periodic visits, thereby ensuring that the overall situation in each Party to the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (ECPT) is examined by the Committee on average every four to five years. The somewhat lower number of periodic visits during the last twelve months is linked to the significant turnover in the CPT’s membership at the end of 2009. It was decided that all new members should attend at least two plenary meetings before taking part in a visit, so as to make sure that they are properly acquainted with the Committee’s working methods when they join a visiting delegation for the first time. This has led to a concentration of periodic visits in the second half of 2010; six such visits will be organised in the last four months of this year. 3. The volume of the annual visit programme as a whole – which has hovered around the 160-day mark since 2005 – remains insufficient to cope effectively with the workload generated by 47 Parties to the ECPT. Development of that programme continues to be hampered above all by an unfavourable staff situation (see paragraphs 95 to 98). 7