Seeking justice

2021 was a year of important victories for victims of torture and other ill-treatment at the international level, even if impunity for these crimes remains pervasive across the world. Impunity was the focus of our briefing note submitted to the Special Rapporteur on torture in May, ahead of the elaboration of a new report that highlighted key obstacles to accountability for torture.

In May, together with our SOS-Torture Litigators’ Group in Latin America (Grupo de Litigantes contra la Tortura), we submitted an amicus curiae brief to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the case Manuela and relatives vs El Salvador. The brief focused on the implications of the criminalisation of a miscarriage and Manuela’s subsequent death after inhuman conditions of detention. The details of Manuela’s story can be found in this blog post.

In a landmark ruling issued on 30 November, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights established, for the first time, standards against the criminalisation of women seeking reproductive health care, including abortion, across the region. The ruling held El Salvador responsible for the violation of multiple rights, including the right to be free from torture and other ill-treatment, through a gender perspective, and ordered the country to make full reparations to Manuela’s family.

In a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court of Pakistan ruled, in February, that capital punishment cannot be carried out for people with severe mental illness. The Justice Project Pakistan, a member of our Asia SOS-Torture Litigators’ Group, challenged the death sentence of three prisoners who suffer from schizophrenia. The Supreme Court commuted their death sentence to life imprisonment, and they were sent to a mental health facility. After a six-year moratorium, Pakistan resumed executions in 2014.

In October, the Economic Community of Western African States (ECOWAS) Court of Justice condemned Togo to provide compensation to a woman, victim of gender-based violence in the context of a demonstration in September 2017, and to conduct a prompt and effective investigation. The case was litigated by the Collectif des associations contre l’impunité au Togo (CACIT) with the support of our SOS-Torture Litigators’ Group in Africa (Groupe d’intervention judiciaire, GIJ).

It is also worth noting that various complaints were brought in 2021 to United Nations experts tasked with monitoring how States respect their human rights obligations. The Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (CHRDA) and the SOS-Torture Litigators’ Group in Africa filed a complaint against Cameroon before the United Nations Committee against Torture (UNCAT). The complaint concerns an English-speaking Cameroonian citizen, who was subjected to torture by the security forces in 2019. He was wrongly accused of complicity with separatist armed groups. The case aims at leading to the first decision against Cameroon by the UNCAT. In addition, lawyers of the same Litigators’ Group brought two cases against Burundi before the UNCAT, on behalf of victims of the 2015 repression. The victims had been either arrested and tortured by intelligence services while in incommunicado detention or suffered extra-custodial use of force, including by lethal weapons, during police operations.