United Nations Human Rights Website - Treaty Bodies Database - Document - Sessional/Annual Report of Committee - in 1991. 2. Positive aspects 192. Paraguay has not adopted any "clean slate" or amnesty act. 193. Article 5 of the Paraguayan Constitution gives constitutional rank to the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and stipulates that there is no statutory limitation on judicial proceedings intended to punish those offences. 194. Under article 137 of the Constitution, international treaties, conventions and agreements, including the Convention against Torture and the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture, once approved and ratified, form part of Paraguayan domestic law and rank higher than the laws and immediately below the Constitution. 195. The guarantees applicable to arrest and detention, which are set forth in article 12 of the Constitution, provide a legal framework that can and should help to prevent torture. 196. The constitutional provisions governing states of emergency are consistent with the nonderogability provision contained in article 2, paragraph 2, of the Convention against Torture. 3. Factors and difficulties impeding the application of the provisions of the Convention 197. Nearly five years after the promulgation of the Constitution of Paraguay, there has been no implementation of the decision to establish an ombudsman, whose mandate, duties and functions provide an opportunity for effective action to promote and protect human rights and prevent torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment through systematic inspection of the places where those offences are reportedly practised. The Constitution also authorizes the ombudsman to protect torture victims, investigate reports and complaints of torture and publicly condemn or report its occurrence. 198. There has been insufficient activity on the part of the Public Prosecutor's Department, as may be inferred from the report considered by the Committee, which states that between 1991 and the date of completion of the report, criminal proceedings had been instituted in respect of physical ill-treatment by public officials in only 15 cases. 4. Subjects of concern 199. There is no definition of torture in existing legislation and the definition contained in the draft Penal Code at the current stage of its consideration by Parliament does not meet the obligation imposed on the State party by article 4 of the Convention in relation to article 1 thereof. The definition contained in the original form of the draft was inadequate and the current one is even more so. 200. The Committee has been informed by reliable sources that although the infliction of torture and illtreatment is no longer, as in the past, an official State policy, it is still practised by public officials, particularly in police stations and primary detention centres, in order to obtain confessions or http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(Symbol)/de75e94f920bd0a0802565a600537744?Opendocument (33 of 109)16/10/2006 9:54:12 AM