Newspapers
MagazinesWire
Dispatches 
December 6, 1984
p.4
“UN Panel OKs Anti-Torture Pact”
By BROOKE W. KROEGER
Newsday UN Bureau
UNITED NATIONS A United Nations committee agreed yesterday
to send a landmark international convention against torture to the General
Assembly for adoption.
Delegates erupted in applause and good cheer an infrequent
outburst in the UN's staid chambers as chairman Ali Abdi Madar of Somalia
banged his gavel to affirm the decision for the Social, Humanitarian and
Cultural committee, on which all 159 UN member nations have seats. The
vote came after a flurry of last-minute compromises and tense 11th-hour
maneuvers that could have postponed the vote.
In the next few weeks before adjournment, a resolution
to adopt the international agreement will come before the General Assembly.
Passage was considered almost certain.
UN administrators said there is no precedent in memory
for the General Assembly to reject a resolution approved in committee.
Delegates leaving the meeting hailed the decision as the
most important this year by the so-called Third Committee, which is concerned
mainly with human rights. Some declared it among the most significant
issues to be addressed by the General Assembly this session. An Amnesty
International representative said it would “the most significant”
of human rights instruments on the books. The convention would bind ratifying
nations to arrest and extradite torturers and set up a committee to monitor
cases of torture.
In Amnesty International's latest report on torture in
the 1980s, published last spring, 66 nations were cited for torture, brutality
or ill treatment of prisoners.
Until the last moment of debate yesterday, however, there
was so much dissention over the draft coming mainly from representatives
of the East bloc and non-aligned nations that cosponsors felt consensus
was the least likely outcome.
The convention already had spent seven years in the drafting
phase in the 43-nation Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Debate over
the document has been going on in UN corridors since it arrived in September.
The problems were mainly on two planes: No country wanted
to be perceived as opposing an international convention against something
as universally abhorrent as torture. Yet many had serious reservations
about some of the draft's most important provisions.
The sore points were in Articles 19 and 20, which call
for an independent committee of experts to investigate allegations of
torture and possibly visit countries accused of violations. Investigations
would be confidential but conclusions could later be made public.
India had asked that acceptance of those articles be optional
so that countries that object to the committee acting on information from
any source, including the western media, could still accede to the convention.
The Soviet Union backed India's position.
But cosponsors, notably the Netherlands and Sweden, refused
to consider making the articles optional. If they did, they said, the
convention would lose its teeth. The Soviets charged that the “teeth”
provisions smacked of politicization.
Monday, the Soviet republic of Byelorussia offered a compromise
amendment stating that at the time of ratification, a nation could declare
it does not recognize the authority of the committee provided for in Article
20.
India actively promoted the compromise among non-aligned
colleagues, and the cosponsors also agreed that it was acceptable.
After delegates returned from a 10-minute break, one further
small change was added and the revised resolution was adopted by consensus.
India's Rajendra Rathore left the meeting beaming. “You
see,” he said. “We got a consensus.”