Time to accept that GM crops have their place

by Martin Pollard

Chief Executive, WCIA

Of all the articles of faith drawn up by environmentalists – many of which I share – it is surely their passionate opposition to genetically modified food that has achieved the most success in recent times.

That is the case in the European Union, anyway, where regulations on labelling, traceability and control are tighter than anywhere else in the world. Approvals for new GM products are rare, with a lack of support among member states meaning that “MON 810” maize is the only GM food cultivated commercially in the EU. GM food remains verboten under organic farming standards. Wherever scientists dare to conduct trials of new modified crops –however well controlled – the activists gather.

I am under no illusion that producing GM foods is completely safe, easy or free of negative consequences. Clearly, tight regulation is needed – as in any developing scientific field – to ensure that research is not open to over-eagerness or, worse, damaging exploitation by commercial concerns. But it is the inflexibility of many environmentalists’ approach that worries me. The clear overtone of “No GM, no matter what” is anti-scientific and anti-progressive. Instead, I am arguing that our attitude towards GM should be a cautious “yes”: yes to honest, hard-working science; yes to GM making its contribution to food security and climate change adaptation; and, of course, yes to all of the controls and regulations that are needed to make this process rigorous and effective. (The recent ban on GM trials in India reminds us of the importance of a tight regulatory system.)

It is not as if we Europeans can easily shield ourselves from GM products in any case. Meat-eaters, take note: it is estimated that 85% of the animal feed used in Europe contains unlabelled GM material. In a globalised food chain, only the most self-sufficient eaters will ever know exactly what they are eating.

But I also find it hard to understand why we are so insistent on shielding ourselves in the first place. The United States, India, China and others plant GM crops as a matter of course. One recent Chinese study showed that GM cotton crops benefit the environment, with reduced use of pesticides leading to a recovery in biodiversity in fields. And the use of GM technology in this way now appears to be supported by the British public, undermining the regularly claimed obstacle that “no-one wants GM here”.

In other areas of the world, particularly in drought-affected developing economies, GM may provide an important part of the solution to food insecurity. This is not to say that it is the only answer, or the most important one. But as the Kenyan Harvard professor Calestous Juma points out, we need all the solutions we can lay our hands on: “It doesn’t make sense to reduce the size of the toolbox when the challenges are expanding.” Another Kenyan, Felix M’mboyi, notes that European criticism of GM comes “with the luxury of a full stomach”.

Oxfam draws our attention to a number of key challenges in global food security, including the trade system, women’s participation, climate change and sustainable agriculture. GM food is not the solution to many of these issues, but it is one potential solution to some of them. At present, there is little opportunity to access GM crops for the small-scale farmers whose livelihoods are most threatened by the current challenges. Managed carefully by the international community, and with effective controls on markets, this could change.

Campaigners cite the ‘precautionary principle’ when fighting GM science, claiming that researchers should prove that GM crops are not harmful before they are allowed to proceed. But what happens when that principle comes up against the hard reality that our food resources are under greater demographic, economic and environmental pressure than ever before? When do we accept that while there might be some negative consequences of this technology – no matter how hard we strive to forestall them – the positive consequences might be greater?

There have certainly been failures, both scientific and ethical, in the GM trials and commercial arrangements conducted so far. But the history of scientific endeavour shows us that it is sensible to try harder to make things work, rather than to stop trying altogether.

Human trafficking in Wales: The hidden story

by Jenny Sims

A report on the WCIA's recent event at the Novotel, Cardiff. Jenny is a freelance journalist, editor and media consultant. Her blog is at http://spinningjennyblog.wordpress.com/

It’s on our doorsteps, in our streets, local shops, restaurants, factories, nail bars and saunas. It’s not just in big towns and cities but quiet villages and remote rural areas.

The “slave trade” of trafficked and abused children and adults for work and sex is everywhere.  But don’t think “Mr Nasty” is always the perpetrator of the crime, it’s often Mr or Mrs “Normal” selling and enslaving victims for profit, according to the experts.

So accept it. “Wake up” and “speak up”. Tell someone if you suspect a child is being abused, a woman is being forced to into sex work against her will, or a man into slave labour. The signs are often there but we ignore them.

Share your suspicions and tell someone in authority, the police, health services, teachers or charities. It’s the first step in helping victims escape, and enabling authorities bring the traffickers to justice.

These were the key messages from leading campaigners at a meeting organised by the Welsh Centre for International Affairs. Such was the interest from charities, social services and other organisations that the organisers had to switch venues – to a bigger Cardiff hotel!

On the night nearly 200 people packed a Novotel conference room to hear from leading figures in the field. The statistics are shocking: trafficking is a £32billion industry worldwide – and growing rapidly.

Pioneering policies inWales puts it “second only toLondon” in the way it’s helping victims and prosecuting traffickers, according to Robert Toobey, Anti Human Trafficking Co-ordinator for Wales, employed by Gwent Police.

Even so, the number of prosecutions is still very small. The number of victims is unknown. And not only members of the public but even some people in local authorities deny it exists in their area.

Mr Toobey, former head of Cardiff CID, whose team took on the first successful human trafficking case inWales, warns: “Anyone who thinks it isn’t happening inWales– think again.”

A wide range of solutions is being offered by organisations such as, Safer Wales, BAWSO and the International Justice Mission.

But the urgent task is to “destroy the climate of disbelief and denial”, says Joyce Watson, AM for Mid & West Wales, whose Cross-Party report on trafficking was published in 2010.*

Someone during the evening suggested that we tell three people about trafficking and ask them to tell three people.  Good idea. I’m passing it on…

*Knowing no boundaries – Local Solutions to an International Crime. www.humantraffickingwales.com

Further information:

www.saferwales.com

www.bawso.org.uk

Languages: A passport to the world

Our latest blog post comes from Rebeccah Williams of Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Glantaf, currently enjoying her work experience at the WCIA.

 

Languages. There are 6,912 of them in the world, but they’re not very popular in Britain. To British teenagers, languages are usually associated with school, exams, and a lot of effort, but being able to speak more than one language is actually extremely helpful for our future and can help us in later life. They are very, very useful. 

The countries where the highest proportion of children learn foreign languages in secondary schools are Czech Republic, France, The Netherlands, Finland and Sweden. The lowest are Ireland (58%), and the United Kingdom (32%). So why do British people not like learning foreign languages?

The list of possibilities for things to do with languages is endless. It’s commonly thought that if you do languages, the only jobs you could ever do is teaching, or be a translator. Fortunately, that thought is wrong as you could do just about anything! Yes, you could be a teacher, if you wanted to, or you could be a translator, but you could also be a yacht/jet seller, and sell incredible yachts/jets to multi billionaires from all over the world. If you love video games, you could be a video game tester, making sure that companies have translated words and sentences properly from one language to another. You could also be a tour organiser if you love travelling. This enables you to travel and use your languages. There are many, many more ‘less known’ jobs that you could get with languages! 

If you wanted to work in business, there is a good chance that your work would lead you out of the UK, or you would have to deal with people from foreign countries. Being in business probably means that these people will speak English anyway, but speaking their native language, will make the whole affair more comfortable and easy. It will also give the colleague a good first impression, as you are making an effort to speak his/her language.

Also, if you decide to move countries, it helps if you can speak your chosen country’s language already. It helps the move become easier and less of a struggle. Especially if you are moving to work in that country, and have to go straight into the busy life with people speaking to you and expecting you to know what they are saying. It’s exactly the same if you are thinking of studying abroad. 

Unfortunately, the number of pupils that took French and German for GCSE in the UK dropped dramatically from 479,413 pupils in 1995 to 215,108 in 2010. The number of pupils that took foreign languages for A level almost halved between 1996 and 2010. Wales, study shows, is the worst country in the UK at the moment for students in high school taking foreign languages. In 1995 the numbers studying a foreign language for GCSE were 55% but those numbers declined to 29.6% in 2008. 

The director of Wales’ National Center of Languages (Cilt Cymru), Ceri James, said: "A lack of interest in subjects such as French and German is holding the nation back in an increasingly competitive European jobs market."

The British are terribly bad at learning foreign languages, and the situation is getting worse. A decade ago, around 80% of high school children studied a foreign language; now, only 48%. A clear reason for this is because English has become a universal language and is spoke well in most countries, therefore the British can travel around the world without having too much of a problem with communicating. Also, British children do not often learn English grammar, and therefore when they come across foreign language grammar, they find it quite difficult. Instead of choosing to study a hard and confusing subject, they turn to subjects that are more interesting to them and that they can do.

Welsh people are also lacking in language enthusiasts. This is odd because in Wales, children are used to having to cope with learning more than one language on a day-to-day basis, and therefore learning another language might not be that much of a problem. Although you could argue that if Welsh children have to learn another language, then they might not want to study yet another one, and so choose not to carry on with foreign languages, and stick to their native languages. It all lies with the personality of the student. 

Languages help you, and although sometimes they can be a lot of effort, they pay off in the long run. Even if you don’t want to mainly focus on languages and have other interests that you wish to start a career in, you could always try and get that job in that area of expertise abroad - thanks to the language(s) you can speak. 

According to figures from the Office of National Statistics, UK unemployment rose in the months building up to Christmas and the New Year by 28,000, making the total unemployment figure 2.67 million. If you have a language under your belt, precious job vacancies will be easier for you to find and different and new opportunities will present themselves to you, whilst others desperately hunt for jobs. 

Audrey Hepburn (Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, English), Johnny Depp (English, French), Morgan Freeman (English, French), Roger Federer (English, German, French), Sandra Bullock (English, German), and my role model, J.K.Rowling (English, German, French, Spanish) all speak more than one language, and they have all been highly successful in their work. If you want to be an actor, then being able to speak another language is also useful, because it might enable you to do some acting abroad or in different languages.

In conclusion, languages are a basic skill and everyone needs to be able to speak at least one. Some enjoy learning them, and therefore learn as many as they can. Others prefer to just stick with the language they’re comfortable with and enjoy other subjects. Languages aren’t for all of us, and for many, they can be extremely difficult, but they really do benefit you in life, and they give you more confidence to do what you want to do.

Lessons from Libya

by Martin Pollard

In a lecture at the Temple of Peace earlier this month, Alan Doss reminded us that the United Nations is not a pacifist organisation. In its search for peace and justice – at least when that is what its members seek – an international alliance will sometimes have to choose a violent way to bring about change. Doss, who worked for the UN throughout his career but saw his greatest challenge at the end of it, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, faced criticism from Congolese refugees who accused him of not doing enough to prevent violence there. But while the Congo’s situation may be unique in its level of depravity, with rape being used as a systematic weapon of war, it is not unique in demonstrating that where international troops intervene in a national conflict, things will inevitably get dirty. Iraq and Afghanistan provide our clearest recent examples of what can go wrong.

However, no-one who is committed to democracy or human rights should doubt that sometimes, the violence used to bring about change is justifiable when weighed against its longer-term benefits. It looks as if Libya falls into that category and, I would argue, provides a case study about which pacifists might think long and hard.

Saying this, by the way, is not the same as saying that we should ignore the abuses carried out by liberators, or that we should applaud Muammar Gaddafi’s swift and bloody execution. Plainly, the former are inexcusable in the context of a fight for freedom and democratic rights; we can only hope that reconciliation with Gaddafi loyalists is not all the harder as a result. The latter is a greyer area, as it’s clear that seeing the dictator’s corpse paraded on national television has been cathartic for Libyans, most of whom frankly had no interest in seeing him tried in court. But the justice seeker in me wishes it had been otherwise.

As many journalists noted, Gaddafi’s end looked like that of Saddam Hussein. Months after losing power, he had lost the country and his name had lost its power to terrorise. He was found in a bolthole, and despite keeping his promise to die in Libya, the end was inglorious. But attempts to draw comparisons with the actual conflict in Iraq are less fruitful.

First, this was a widely backed military intervention, endorsed by the United Nations and, perhaps more importantly, the League of Arab States. The UN resolution that decided NATO’s course stressed that this was a mission to protect Libyan civilians from Gaddafi’s attacks, under the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine hammered out following the international community’s inaction in Rwanda. Gareth Evans, who co-chaired the commission that developed R2P, said:

"The international military intervention in Libya is not about bombing for democracy or Muammar Gaddafi's head… Legally, morally, politically, and militarily it has only one justification: protecting the country's people."

That was on 24 March, a few days after the action began. In the months that followed there were worldwide cries of “mission creep”, as the intervention evolved from simply protecting civilians into an all-out effort to unseat Gaddafi’s regime. But what remained constant throughout those months was that NATO essentially played a supporting role. This was a genuine popular revolution with nationwide support from those who had seen their communities beaten, starved and denied a voice for 42 years.

Secondly, Libya has seemed remarkably united behind efforts to oust the dictator, with Gaddafi loyalists evaporating to an insignificant (though well armed) minority in a relatively short time. And there seems a real hunger for democracy throughout the country, despite the recent suggestion that sharia law will hold sway. The optimistic view is that Libyans will simply not allow a strongly Islamist government to take root, and that they will prioritise their new freedoms over tribal differences. But even if they do not, Libya is still no Iraq: there is no powder keg of ethnic and religious conflict waiting to be lit, and no comparable regional influences seeking to undermine the new order.

Debate will continue to rage over the way in which NATO plainly exceeded its authority in pursuing regime change in Libya. There will also be voices raised in objection at the UN’s selective protection of Libyan civilians from their own government, when it has done little or nothing in Syria or Burma or Zimbabwe. Richard Falk at Princeton University argues that the UN needs to separate the responsibility to protect from geopolitical considerations, and proposes establishing a UN Emergency Force in future cases – similar, perhaps, to the international standing army sought by Lord David Davies, founder of the Temple of Peace.

But whatever course that debate takes, Libya does remind us that international intervention can work; that military force is a legitimate means of protecting human rights; and that pacifism as a principle is difficult to defend. What happens next will, if the peace is secured effectively over the coming months, be up to ordinary Libyans. And that’s as it should be.

A bagful of promises

By Martin Pollard

Anyone doing the usual hellish trawl of Cardiff’s shopping metropolis on Saturday will not have failed to notice that something has changed. How much it affects you, of course, will depend on your existing eco-credentials, or at least your penchant for a rucksack. Yes, the carrier bag charge – mighty symbol of a new green Wales – has arrived, and shop assistants everywhere are tiring already of the need to remind us.

Don’t let my soupçon of sarcasm give you the wrong idea: the 5p charge is clearly A Good Idea. We should doubtless be proud that our newly-empowered lawmakers have decided to follow the example of Ireland, albeit at a lower rate and without any of the new funds entering public coffers. It’s just that one might argue – as George Monbiot did at the weekend – that in the grand scheme of environmental sustainability, it isn’t really that big a deal.

The Federation of Small Businesses was determined to makea stand against it all, even though consumers themselves seemed supportive. “There's a lot of confusion and I think it will take a long time for people to get used to the charge,” they noted, a comment which could hardly be translated into rage by even the hardiest of tabloid headline writers. The Western Mail did, however, manage to make a “storm” out of the fact that the Welsh Local Government Association doubted the law’s enforceability.

The real importance of this law is that it will prove, once again, that legislation is better than regulation if you want the nation to change its lifestyle. We’ve seen it with the decline in smoking, and with the ban on using our phones when driving. On the flip side, one look at our hopelessly inadequate response to the obesity crisis is enough to tell us that so-called ‘self-regulation’ by the food industry simply doesn’t work.

But charging for carrier bags is painless. It will take a few weeks, or months at most, for everyone to accept it as a fact of life and take reusable bags wherever they go. No-one makes a big sacrifice. Dealing with the ramifications of climate change on a bigger scale is where the real challenge lies.

Oxfam recently reported that the Horn of Africa, already suffering a devastating drought which has killed thousands and forced nearly a million Somalis to leave their homes, faces a likely temperature increase of 3-4°C by 2080-2099 relative to 1980-1999. Quoting a Royal Society report, they predicted a 20% decline in yields in maize crops and up to 50% in bean crops. That’s just one region of one continent, but Somalia is one of the poorest and least stable countries in the world. The effects of climate change, as we are continually reminded by NGOs desperate for swifter global action, will be felt most keenly by those who have the least resources to cope.

It’s not even as if our governments fundamentally disagree on the science of climate change. Last December in Cancun, nearly every member state of the UN agreed on a whole range of principles including cutting carbon emissions, helping developing countries to deploy cleaner energy, and getting a grip on the destruction of rainforests. But it’s the political leadership back home, after the inspiring words have been spoken on the world stage, that is lacking.

Here in our cosseted world of the developed North, we have still not come terms with the fact that dealing with climate change really is going to mean making sacrifices. We can dream all we like about fleets of electric cars, vast investments in renewable energy, or the wholesale dismantling of global capitalism to make way for some kind of pastoral localist idyll. But in real world politics, what will really make the change will be when world leaders are brave enough to stand up and start saying, “Sorry – this is going to hurt.”

No more cheap flights. Big increases in taxation for private cars and investment in sustainable transport. Public campaigns to eat less meat. Until governments start speaking up for these kinds of steps – and there are many more – we, the public, are unlikely to adopt the wholesale change of mindset that will be necessary if we really mean business. Climate change is likely to be the defining issue of the twenty-first century – politically and socially as well as environmentally – and we need our public figures to face up to it. Like the Poor Laws or the start of the welfare state – but a global issue in an unprecedentedly globalised world – we need a wholesale change in our society’s narrative. Individuals and communities will contribute in important ways, but we need the political weight and financial wherewithal of our governments to make the really big changes.

I do believe that this change will come: it has to. But as mitigation of climate change fades inexorably into adaptation to its reality, we can only hope that it will happen sooner rather than later.

From one extreme to the other

By Martin Pollard

An interesting article on Tuesday’s Today programme posed the question of whether Anders Behring Breivik – the extremist who has confessed to the mass killings in Norway – should be considered “mad”. There followed much talk of semantics and definitions, of course, with John Humphrys playing his usual role of straight-talking stalwart to the guests’ more cautious undertakings. But the most intriguing point was one that had nothing to do with insanity, but with politics. Rightly identifying that all forms of extremism should be confronted with civic debate where possible, Maajid Nawaz (former extremist himself and founder of the think-tank Quilliam) nonetheless stated that Breivik, a “fascist”, was “the mirror opposite” of an Islamist.

Now, clearly there is a very important difference between Islamic extremism and right-wing extremism. Quite apart from the differing demands of a white supremacist gunman in Norway and a bomb layer in Kabul, there is a gulf in majority-white Britain’s reaction to the two which has its roots in culture, language, religion and – let’s face it – skin colour. That’s why it is so very important that the media get this right. We should all applaud Charlie Brooker’s very eloquent condemnation of the ill-informed speculation that dogged the initial coverage of the Norway killings, a symptom of the must-guess -now obsession that is the unintended consequence of our 24-hour news culture. We must resist the narrative of the post-9/11 world that pushes us towards the view that nowhere in world will ever be safe again, and that this is the fault of Muslims.

But “the other end of the scale”? Something in this doesn’t ring true; in fact, as soon as you start to pull apart those words, you smell a rat, and perhaps an unpleasant and hypocritical one at that.

What precisely is this scale? A political one, with white fascists at one end at Islamists at the other? This appears to have no rational basis at all. Both groups exist primarily out of a hatred for others who don’t look or sound like them, whether the targets are pro-immigration left-wingers or democracy-loving Westerners. In fact, fascists and Islamic extremists essentially hate the same people – liberals. The fact that the latter purport to have religious reasons for doing so seems only to be relevant in terms of how they define the ‘other’. Both support the violent overthrow of those who oppose them; both have demonstrated numerous times that they will act on those beliefs.

Both groups push an extreme ideology, and do not care whether this outrages the majority of peaceful citizens in their countries. They assume that much of this opposition derives from some establishment-driven conspiracy theory, and their propaganda rests on this conceit. It has a degree of success in both cases, trickling down through more mainstream opinion and emerging in street protests that demand the killing of Americans, or in fact-free hate campaigns against immigrants led by national newspapers.

It is a deeply unpleasant aspect of such movements that they equate democracy and freedom with cowardice and immorality. But many of us progressives must accept a part of the blame, for all too often we fail to condemn such voices equally, to stand firm against hatred and fascism in all its forms. For Islamist terrorism is a form of fascism; not the opposite of a right-wing ideology cooked up in a Norwegian’s bedroom, but the same thing seen through a different lens.

The denial of such commonalities is not new. When the US and UK were preparing to invade Iraq in 2003, I condemned it as an illegal act which would kill tens of thousands of civilians and take many years to achieve a resolution. So it has proved, and I stand by my opposition to that war. But at the time, I was also ashamed at some of the company I found myself in. I found it bizarre that fellow liberals – led, of course, by the left’s über-clown of reductivist posturing, George Galloway – could actually support Saddam Hussein, one of the worst mass-murderers of the 20th century, to all intents and purposes a fascist dictator. And there was more: a deeply unpleasant current of anti-American fervour, a blind prejudice against everything the US stood for which should now be named for what it was – racism. (For more in this vein, I recommend reading Nick Cohen’s excoriating What’s Left?. I don’t endorse Cohen’s arguments in their entirety, but he does make a good case that the left is in danger of becoming morally redundant on such issues.)

Of course, there are those who claim that Islamism is different, that it derives from anger at Western economic and cultural dominance, and that this might be righteous anger. But while Al-Qaeda might spin theories about Judaeo-Christian conspiracies to destroy Islam, it makes no claim to be the ideology of the oppressed. Even if it did, we have long seen our way past the failures of the Weimar and the Third Reich’s promises of riches to – rightly – pass judgement on the Nazi foot-soldiers and collaborators. We should do the same with Islamist extremists.

Francis Wheen, in his entertaining survey of How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, singles out Noam Chomsky among the so-called leftists who are so intent on damning America and all its works that they “abandon reality and morality altogether rather than forgo their comforting choices”. Chomsky gave the benefit of the doubt to Pol Pot and Slobodan Milošević, “strenuously downplaying the scale of their terror”, whereas:

With the United States… no proof is required. In October 2001 he stated as a fact that Pentagon strategists were planning the ‘slaughter and silent genocide’ of three or four million Afghans during their military campaign against the Taliban.

It is vital that we oppose ugly prejudices wherever we find them – and that includes a recognition that hatred and violence can emerge from people of all backgrounds, all ethnic and religious groups. We can all agree that our popular media have a key role to play here, in resisting what often appears to be an engrained prejudice – sometimes subtle, sometimes not – against people who are not Christian or not white. But liberals, lefties and internationalists must play their part too, if those descriptions are to mean anything. We must resist the analysis of world events which divides acts into two broad camps – things which challenge the West, and are therefore good, and things which support its ‘hegemony’, and are therefore bad. If freedom and human rights are to mean anything, then we have a duty to defend them against all their attackers.

The Challenges of Tackling Torture

By  Ayushman Jamwal

 Professor Malcolm Evans, Chairman, UN sub-committee on the Prevention of Torture, spoke at the Welsh Centre of International Affairs on the measures being taken by international governing bodies to address the practice of torture.

Organised in collaboration with UNA Wales and Cardiff University, Professor Evans’ lecture highlighted the conundrum in international human rights legislation where over the years, a growth in legal human rights mechanisms have been accompanied by a rise in the global practice of torture.

According to him, domestic and international watchdogs lack cohesive measures to address human rights abuse and enforce the 1984 UN Convention against torture. In many nations, he argued, domestic courts are powerless to enforce anti-torture laws due to widespread corruption and the state’s complicity in the practice. Moreover, he explained, as there is an obligation between states to be subject to international law, the enforcement of human rights law is highly relative. To a great extent, it is exercised in an advisory capacity through reports and recommendations, he said.

Concerned with the lack of power wielded by international and national watchdogs and courts, Prof Evans explained the UN’s recent innovation drive to hold states accountable to human rights breaches within their borders.

He first elaborated the UN’s call for “universal jurisdiction” for extraditive punishment. According to this plan, he said, individuals accused of human rights violations could be extradited within a network of domestic courts of member nations to jurisdictions where depending on the crime, human rights law is more powerfully enforced. He cited the interesting example of former US President, George W Bush, who after announcing his authorization for the water-boarding torture technique, cancelled a visit to Switzerland as the Swiss authorities sought to prosecute him under universal jurisdiction.

However, the legal tool has not become a popular exercise amongst member nations due to its potential in souring diplomatic relations, he said.

              

Prof Evans then described the UN’s Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture, where signatory members are obliged to create a national torture watchdog to monitor human rights violations within state institutions from police stations, prisons, military institutions to childcare homes and psychiatric wards. 


He argued that national organisations know the best means of gathering information, conceptualising domestic mechanisms for the enforcement of anti-torture laws, and mobilising legal action. Moreover, he explained that these national organisations gain support from UN human rights institutions in an advisory capacity in tailoring operational guidelines and strategies. The UN operates a Special Fund, fed by donations from OPCAT nations to help domestic watchdogs and civil society groups in curtailing torture; holds a Universal Periodic review to mount criticism against non-compliant member states on a multinational platform; coordinates with domestic watchdogs to hold surprise visits to catalogue and create reports on human rights abuse through interviews, analysis of state procedures and the conditions of detention centres.

“A victory for the UN has been that 57 states have ratified OPCAT, making it the largest of all human rights treaty bodies”, said Prof Evans.

He concluded his lecture saying that torture cannot be prevented once and for all. The best international and domestic organisations can do is put in place collaborative mechanisms of support to aid in torture prevention, and use the power of the media to maintain the spotlight on breaches of human rights.

“Torture needs to be challenged in member nations, not in Geneva”, said Prof Evans. Measures need to be tailored according to different socio-economic contexts to overcome bureaucratic challenges and to achieve the best possible results, he argued. Overarching rules and stipulations cannot achieve an effective mitigation of torture.   

When asked how to tackle state sanctioned torture in the Middle East, especially in the context of state forces clashing with pro-democracy movements, Prof Evans said that the UN is powerless as Lebanon is the only OPCAT member in the region. However he added that, “It is my hope that the successful pro-democracy movements aim to put in place benchmarks to uphold human rights”. “If requested, the UN will support the emerging governments to set up guidelines and mechanisms for strong and robust national human rights legislation” he said.