Preface to the Second Revised Edition
The first edition to this Commentary was written during the early years of Manfred
Nowak’s term as UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, i.e. between 2004 and 2006. Thanks
to the financial support of the Governments of Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and
Germany, he was able to establish an “anti-torture team” of highly skilled and dedicated researchers at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights (BIM), which
was founded by Manfred Nowak and Hannes Tretter in 1992 and directed by them
jointly since then. Elizabeth McArthur was employed at the BIM as the lead researcher
for the Commentary with funds provided by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). The
website www.atlas-of-torture.org was established to document and promote the work of
the Special Rapporteur and observe the worldwide situation of torture and ill-treatment.
In addition, Manfred Nowak had served since 2000 as head of a visiting commission
to all places of police detention in Austria, established as part of the Human Rights
Advisory Board in the Ministry of Interior. In this task, he was also supported by members of the “anti-torture team” at the BIM. These practical experiences and the theoretical research on the Commentary complemented each other in the most productive
and fruitful manner. Besides Elizabeth McArthur also Julia Kozma, Roland Schmidt and
Isabelle Tschan, who prepared and carried out many missions and reports of the Special
Rapporteur, as well as Kerstin Buchinger participated in the academic research work for
the Commentary. In other words, the first edition, although finally authored by Manfred
Nowak and Elizabeth McArthur, was a joint product of many researchers and practitioners at BIM.
The mandate of Manfred Nowak as UN Special Rapporteur on Torture came to an end
in October 2010. However, the torture-related work of the BIM continued. The “anti-
torture team” had grown into the Department of “Human Dignity and Public Security”
and is currently led by Moritz Birk, who was already part of the Special Rapporteur’s
team. The Special Rapporteur’s work was followed up by a three-year project -financed
by the European Union and in partnership with local civil society organisations -to assist
a group of selected States (Moldova, Paraguay, Togo and Uruguay) in the implementation of the Special Rapporteur’s recommendations. Manfred Nowak continued to serve
as head of a visiting commission monitoring the Austrian police, which was in 2012
transferred to the Austrian Ombuds-Board, which assumed the function of National
Preventive Mechanism (NPM) in accordance with OPCAT. The researchers at the BIM
provided their services to two visiting commissions and thereby gained also significant
experience with the practice of an NPM. The diverse experiences were used in a variety
of other projects of applied research and practical assistance to States notably to support the establishment and functioning of NPMs. The different projects to fight torture
and ill-treatment worldwide and promote human rights in the criminal justice system
by the Department can be accessed on the Institutes’ website: https://bim.lbg.ac.at/en/
human-dignity-and-public-security.
When we decided, again upon request of Oxford University Press and with the generous financial support of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), to prepare a second edition
of the Commentary, it was clear that this would have to become a truly joint endeavour