EN_CPT_AR.book Page 21 Monday, October 25, 2010 5:14 PM Publication of CPT visit reports Publication of CPT visit reports Preliminary remarks 32. The well-established trend towards States lifting the veil of confidentiality and publishing CPT visit reports was confirmed during the period covered by this General Report; reports on 19 visits were published by the Committee at the request of the governments concerned. At the time of writing, 243 of the 282 visit reports so far drawn up have been placed in the public domain. As was emphasised in the 19th General Report, authorising publication of visit reports can be seen as one of the most important means of cooperating with the CPT, in view of the increased impact it can give to the Committee’s work. 33. A State-by-State table showing the current situation as regards publication of CPT visit reports is set out in Appendix 6. From that table it is clear that the Russian Federation continues to constitute an exception to the above-mentioned trend. This matter was raised with the Russian authorities during the CPT’s ad hoc visit in April 2010, and the Committee remains hopeful that they will revise their position in due course. The CPT fully agrees with the recent comment by the Committee of Ministers that “…the publication of [CPT visit reports and the Russian authorities’ responses] would be to the benefit of all levels of the Russian administration, nongovernmental groups and the Russian society more generally in terms of promoting human rights protection”.3 The CPT welcomes the publication in November 2009 of the report on the Committee’s most recent visit to Azerbaijan, in 2008, and it hopes that the Azerbaijani authorities will also give favourable consideration to authorising publication of the reports on the three visits from 2004 to 2006. Further, the CPT believes that the time is now more than ripe for publication of the Committee's report to NATO on its visit in 2007 to places of deprivation of liberty in Kosovo4 under the authority of KFOR. 34. In most cases, the government’s response to a visit report is published at the same time as the visit report. However, there is an increasing number of examples of governments deciding to publish CPT visit reports promptly, without awaiting the drawing up of their response. The Belgian, Moldovan and Swedish authorities authorised the publication of the reports on visits to their countries in 2009, before transmitting their response, and the Georgian authorities have very recently proceeded in the same manner as regards the report on the visit to their country in February 2010. Naturally, the CPT welcomes this approach. 3. 4. Reply adopted on 16 September 2010 to Written Question No. 579 by Mrs Taktakishvili, member of the Parliamentary Assembly. See footnote 1 on page 8. 21