E/CN.4/2002/76 page 10 Annex III STATEMENT BY THE SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR TO THE THIRD COMMITTEE OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY DELIVERED ON 8 NOVEMBER 2000 It is a great honour to present my third interim report to the General Assembly. As in previous years, I have presented in this report a number of issues of special concern to the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on torture, in particular overall trends and recent developments in the United Nations human rights mechanisms of relevance to my mandate. I have focused on five issues this year. While the present report does not address the matter, I did, in my report to the fifty-seventh session of the Commission on Human Rights (E/CN.4/2001/66) and in view of the then forthcoming World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, address the question of racism and related intolerance which I believe is all too relevant to issues falling within my mandate. Intimidation as a form of torture I note with appreciation the reference to intimidation in Commission on Human Rights resolution 2001/62, entitled “Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. In paragraph 2, the Commission “condemns all forms of torture, including through intimidation, as described in article 1 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” (emphasis added). A number of decisions by human rights monitoring mechanisms have referred to the notion of mental pain or suffering, including suffering through intimidation and threats, as a violation of the prohibition of torture and other forms of ill-treatment. Similarly, international humanitarian law prohibits at any time and any place whatsoever any threats to commit violence to the life, health and physical or mental well-being of persons. It is my opinion that serious and credible threats, including death threats, to the physical integrity of the victim or a third person can amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or even torture, especially when the victim remains in the hands of law enforcement officials. The problems posed in respect of securing evidence of non-physical forms of torture make it difficult to confirm allegations of these forms of torture. Enforced or involuntary disappearances as a form of torture The jurisprudence of several human rights monitoring mechanisms has referred to the prohibition of torture while dealing with acts of enforced or involuntary disappearances. In particular, I would note that the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances of the Commission on Human Rights stated that “the very fact of being detained as a disappeared person, isolated from one’s family for a long period, is certainly a violation of the right to humane conditions of detention and has been represented to the Group as torture” (see E/CN.4/1983/14, para. 131).