THE OSCE AND THE PROBLEM OF TORTURE Nigel S. Rodley2 "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". So proclaims the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its Article 5. Few of the Declaration's provisions can be said to have passed so securely into the corpus of general international law as the prohibition of torture or other ill-treatment. This human rights obligation does not appear to have surfaced within the OSCE until the 1889 Vienna Document. This can be explained by the essentially East-West bloc nature of human rights discourse, as reflected in its Helsinki Final Act and subsequent documents. Torture was not a systemic problem in either bloc and thus not the stuff of strategic human rights neuralgia. On the other hand, as a human rights issue of global dimensions, it was appropriate that its occurrence within the participating states be addressed as a part of a "normalising" human rights discussion. Thus, the Vienna Document (paragraph 23 (a)-(f)) affirms the prohibition and commits participating states to a number of measures aimed at preventing violations. That commitment was reaffirmed in the Copenhagen Document the following year (paragraph 16 (1)(7)). Further measures of implementation were also envisaged. The prohibition of torture and other illtreatment was again affirmed by the Heads of State or Government subscribing to the Charter of Paris for a New Europe later in 1990. The 1984 Budapest Document (paragraph 20) contains similar exhortations to those contained in the earlier documents, albeit with some discrepancies. How do the commitments translate into treaty obligations? Of the 54 OSCE participating states (including the presently suspended state of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro)), only the Holy See and Kazakhstan are parties to no human rights treaty prohibiting torture. All the others are bound by the European Convention on Human Rights (Article 3) and/or the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 7). Furthermore, all but seven (Azerbaijan, Estonia, The Holy See, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, San Marino and Turkmenistan) are parties to the 1984 United Nations' Convention again Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The picture deteriorates when we look at the record of acceptance of supervisory obligations under the relevant treaties. No individual petition procedure (either under Article 25 of the European Convention or under the Optional Protocol to the Covenant or under Article 22 of the Torture Convention) is recognised by 10 states; Albania, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the Holy See, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan or the United States of America[2]. Four OSCE states parties to the UN Convention against Torture have deposited reservations which prevent the Committee against Torture from studying ex officio under its Article 20, alleged systematic practices of torture: Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Poland. Where a systematic practice occurs, an individual petition procedure may not be an adequate means of addressing it. It may also be noted that 30 of the OSCE states are parties to the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1987). These include, from among the states mentioned in the foregoing paragraph, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Poland and Romania. In keeping with its preventative purpose, this Convention does not purport to offer redress for 2 The United States, although not a party to the American Convention on Human rights (1969), is subject to the individual petition procedure of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights under the Charter of the Organisation of American States. 12 OSCE ODIHR Bulletin Vol. 4 No. 3