About 400 participants attended the International conference titled “monitoring torture, towards an efficient national plan”, which was organized by TRC in partnership with the UN high commissioner office for human rights in the Palestinian territories in the Red Crescent Society hall in al Bireh city on the 30th of June 2010 to Commemorate the UN International day in Support of Victims of Torture “26th of June”.
The conference comes as part of a 3-year EC co-funded project titled “Sustaining and enhancing comprehensive service delivery for Victims of Torture” in the West Bank. The European Union is contributing 80% of the project’s budget of an amount of 1,200,000 Euros.
The main objective of this conference was to come up with action-oriented recommendations and efficient mechanisms regarding monitoring torture and politically-motivated violence practiced against the Palestinians in the Israeli jails and Palestinian detention centers. It also aimed at highlighting the issue of Palestinian detainees in the Israeli prisons and their daily sufferings from the torture policies inflicted against them.
The conference was a proof of the considerable interest that the issues of Palestinian detainees and torture practiced against them have gained on the national and international levels. Such interest was manifested in the wide diversity of the conference attendance in addition to the efficient participation of this attendance.
The conference was initiated by an opening session , in which Dr. Salam Fayyad , the Palestinian prime Minister ; Dr. Mahmud Sehwail , TRC’s executive president ; and Eva Tomic , the head of the UN High Commissioner Office for Human Rights gave their welcome words and displayed the purposes behind organizing such conference.
Then, the conference ran over a course of two panels. In the first, which came under the title “documentation of torture” , Mr. Issa Karakee, the Minister of detainees and ex-detainees affairs ; Mr. Hani Al-Deek , a human rights officer in the UN High Commissioner Office ; and Mr. Shawan Jabarin , the general director of Al-Haq foundation gave their interventions focusing on a diversity of topics related to title of the panel. While the second panel, which came under the title “Towards an efficient national plan”, was enriched by interventions related to the topic of the panel from Dr. Ahmad Barak, a Palestinian chief prosecutor; Mr. Wisam Sehwail, TRC’s research unit manager; Randa Seniora, the executive director of the independent commission for human rights; and Ishai Menuchin, the executive director of the Public committee against torture in Israel.
One of the most important conclusions come up with in this conference is the adoption of efficient and uniform mechanisms for monitoring torture including mechanisms related to gathering relevant data , formulating and raising lawsuits against perpetrators ,which will certainly contribute to motivating the international community to pursuing and prosecuting torture perpetrators in local and international courts.
