Introduction: general framework and definitions “While the prohibition of torture may have originally applied primarily in the context of interrogation, punishment or intimidation of a detainee, the international community has begun to recognize that torture may also occur in other contexts.” 1 As noted by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, psychiatric institutions are among the environments in which persons are at risk of abuse, which can amount to torture or other ill-treatment. To contribute to the capacity-strengthening of monitoring bodies in these types of establishment and to the better prevention of abuses, the APT dedicated its third Jean-Jacques Gautier Symposium to the realities of psychiatric institutions around the world and to the challenges related to monitoring these places of deprivation of liberty. The monitoring of psychiatric institutions Psychiatric institutions form an integral part of the mandate of the SPT and NPMs – the bodies established under the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Torture (OPCAT) whose mandate is to conduct regular visits to “any place in which a person is deprived of liberty (in the sense of not being free to leave) (...) if it relates to a situation in which the State either exercises, or might be expected to exercise a regulatory function.”2 Privately-run healthcare settings, including care centres that use traditional healers, were discussed several times during the Symposium and are also places of detention as defined in the OPCAT. Practice shows that, 10 years after the OPCAT came into force, visits to psychiatric establishments form an integral part of NPMs’ activities 1 2 See the report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan E. Méndez, UN Doc. A/HRC/22/53, 1 February 2013, §15, http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/ HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session22/A.HRC.22.53_English.pdf SPT, Compilation of SPT Advice in response to NPMs’ requests, Advance unedited version, §3, http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/Download. aspx?symbolno=CAT/C/57/4&Lang=en 9