A United Nations (UN) expert has said that fully implementing new human rights standards could improve the lives of people held in psychiatric hospitals and prisons in Ireland.
Speaking at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) international seminar on the prevention of ill-treatment, in Dublin yesterday, Dr Silvia Casale, chairman of the UN Sub-Committee on the Prevention of Torture, said one of the best ways of preventing ill-treatment is through effective monitoring of prisons and closed psychiatric hospitals.
The seminar was part of an ICCL campaign to persuade the Government to sign up to an optional protocol to the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
The aim of the protocol is to prevent ill-treatment by establishing regular visits to places of detention, to be carried out by independent international and national bodies.
Irish law would need to be changed to enable the bodies to carry out their work.
"By knitting together international and national oversight, United Nations and national human rights monitors can make a genuine difference to the lives of vulnerable people held in closed institutions," said Dr Casale.
Other speakers included Suzanne Egan, of the Irish Human Rights Commission. She called on the Government to fully implement the protocol.
Ms Egan pointed out Ireland brought one of the first cases to the European Court of Human Rights under its prohibition on torture concerning the treatment of detainees in Northern Ireland.
