NATIONAL REPORT 2016 Despite this initial willingness and formal commitment to eradicate torture, experience in recent years indicate that the Government may be less committed when words have to be turned into action. In 2007, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs contacted ITEI to request support on the introduction of an Anti-Torture bill and a bill for Prevention Mechanism against Torture. ITEI collaborated with two attorneys from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and assisted the Ministry of Justice with the project. However, in 2010, when the anti-torture law and the law establishing a National Preventive Mechanism were introduced to parliament, it was lamentably never discussed or voted on. During the first cycle of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in 2010, the UN Human Rights Council issued recommendations to the Bolivian State to include the prohibition of torture in domestic law and to bring perpetrators of torture and ill-treatment to justice.2 Both recommendations were accepted, but not implemented. In 2014, at the second cycle of the UPR, Bolivia accepted the recommendation to reform the national preventive mechanism by guaranteeing full independence from the State and ensuring that it had sufficient financial, technical and human resources to perform its monitoring mandate effectively.3 In practice, however, the government never took the implementation of the recommendations seriously. The Servicio de Prevención de la Tortura (SEPRET) was established as national preventive mechanism on 30 December 2013 but is ineffective as it remains under the institutional control of the Ministry of Justice. SEPRET does not meet the requirements of a National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) under the OPCAT due to this lack of independence from the state. Following the UPR recommendations of the UN Human Rights Council in 2014, ITEI, in collaboration with the OHCHR in Bolivia, organised a working group with other human rights organisations to promote the implementation of the recommendations. However, due to the lack of response from the government, they instead established a national “Coalition against Torture”4 (hereinafter, the Coalition) with nine organisations on 20 August 2015. Its aim is to implement national and international norms of prevention, investigation and sanction of acts of torture and ill-treatment. The Coalition prepared a submission on torture to be included in the new penal code and is planning on creating a common database to document cases of torture and ill-treatment. The Coalition aims to use the database from the Data in the Fight Against Impunity5 (DFI) project run by the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT), of which ITEI is a member, as a national database to document cases of alleged torture. page 5 They instead established a national “Coalition against Torture” (hereinafter, the Coalition) with eight organisations on 20 August 2015. Its aim is to implement national and international norms of prevention, investigation and sanction of acts of torture and ill-treatment.