victims. Rather, operating on a mainly confidential basis, it seeks to deter torture and other illtreatment. In any event, the fact remains that both the Vienna and Copenhagen Documents had committed participating states to "consider acceding" to the UN Convention against Torture ("as a matter of priority" in the Copenhagen Document) and, as we have seen, seven have still not done so. The Copenhagen Document also committed participating states to consider withdrawing reservations to Article 20 of the Convention, bur four remain. The same document further committed them to accepting the rights of individual and interstate complaint. 20 OSCE states parties to the Convention have yet to accept the former and 18, the latter. The OSCE itself has failed to contribute substantially to efforts to combat torture. The Copenhagen Document (paragraph 16.6) committed participating states: "to take up with priority for consideration and appropriate action, in accordance with the agreed measures and procedures for the effective implementation of the commitments relating to the human dimension of the OSCE, any cases of torture and other inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment made known to them through official channels or coming from any other reliable source of information". The procedures presently include the (earlier) Vienna and (later) Moscow Mechanisms. As far as I am aware neither mechanism has been successfully invoked to address torture problems within the OSCE. (The closest attempt was the (unusual ) CSO initiative in June 1983 in respect of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). The mission which would have examined reports of human rights violations, including a specified instance of beating, was not allowed to visit the country. This is regrettable, but hardly surprising, since both mechanisms are of an interstate nature. Interstate complaints procedures are notoriously inadequate, as states are reluctant to bring complaints against each other, especially, as with the CSCE mechanisms, several states must agree to the initiative. That they worked partially in the Cold War period of the CSCE is attributable precisely to the role of human rights in the ideological face-off. It is true that implementation meetings on human dimension issues can consider problems raised, for example, by non-governmental organisations. Thus, the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights presented a "Report to the OSCE Implementation Meeting on Human Dimension Issues, Warsaw, 2-19 October 1995". Its chapter on torture and related issues (pages 33-42) listed a number of problems in 19 participating states. Also a substantial number of OSCE countries, from both East and West, are mentioned in the annual reports of the Special Rapporteur on Torture of the UN Commission on Human Rights and in the Budapest Document the Organisation was urged to "draw on the experience of the Special rapporteur" (paragraph 20). Yet, all that emerged in the official consolidated summary were three short paragraphs mentioning the existence of the problem in unnamed states (page 33). In brief, the implementation meetings do not implement. Of course, international treaty rules and machinery cannot, of themselves, put an end to torture where it exists, any more than they are needed where it does not exist. A state may submit itself to all the rules and procedures and torture may still continue (see, for example, Council of Europe, European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, "Public Statement on Turkey - Adopted on 15 December 1992" and "Summary account of the result of the proceedings concerning the inquiry on Turkey", Report of the Committee against Torture, UN Document A/48/44/Add.1 (1994) ), while a state such as the Holy See, which played a positive role during the drafting of the UN Torture Convention, is party to no instrument, but, of course, generates OSCE ODIHR Bulletin Vol. 4 No. 3 13