Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, 26-28 August 2015
Preventing torture and protecting the
rights and dignity of people held in places of detention will be the
focus of the APF’s Third Biennial Conference, to be hosted by the
National Human Rights Commission of Mongolia.
Across the Asia Pacific, staff and
Commissioners from national human rights institutions (NHRIs) regularly
monitor places of detention, from prisons and police lock ups to
immigration detention centres and closed psychiatric facilities.
These preventive visits, and the
recommendations made by NHRIs to detaining authorities and governments,
have helped drive positive changes to laws, policies, practices and
community attitudes across many countries in the region.
The APF Conference will feature presentations from leading speakers:
- on the role of NHRIs to prevent torture and other forms of ill-treatment, and
- on the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT) and monitoring.
There will also be presentations from selected APF Torture Prevention Ambassadors on the innovative projects that they are conducting in their countries
Around 150 representatives from NHRIs,
governments, civil society organisations and UN agencies from across the
Asia Pacific will attend the Conference, which will be held in
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on 28 August 2015.
The APF’s 20th Annual General Meeting will be held prior to the conference, on 26-27 August 2015.
Michel Forst, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders,
will lead a session on the role of NHRIs to protect human rights
defenders and NHRIs at risk when they promote and protect human rights,
involving APF members and civil society organisations from across the
region.