UN documents United Nations Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Twelfth session Geneva, 15-19 November 2010 The approach of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture • I. to the concept of prevention of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Introduction 1. It is beyond doubt that States Parties to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (“the Optional Protocol”) are under a legal obligation to “prevent” torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Article 2, paragraph 1, of the Convention, to which all States Parties to the Optional Protocol must also be parties, provides that “Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction”. Article 16, paragraph 1, of the Convention extends this obligation, providing that “each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of punishment which do not amount to torture…”. As explained by the Committee against Torture in its general comment No. 2, “article 2, paragraph 1, obliges each State party to take actions that will reinforce the prohibition against torture”1. Whilst the obligation to prevent torture and ill-treatment buttresses the prohibition of torture, it also remains an obligation in its own right and a failure to take appropriate preventive measures which were within its power could engage the international responsibility of the State, should torture occur in circumstances where the State would not otherwise have been responsible. 1 CAT/C/GC/2, para. 2. National Preventive Mechanism in the Republic of Slovenia under the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment 151