The Council of Europe's Steering Committee for Human Rights is organising a workshop entitled "Strengthening multilateral efforts to curb trade in torture and death penalty goods" in Strasbourg on 27 November. The event, which will be webstreamed live from 09h00 to 12h30, aims to help national authorities, international organisations and civil society discuss ways of stopping countries trading in goods which could be used for capital punishment or torture.
Thanks to the European Convention on Human Rights, torture and the death penalty are banned in all 46 Council of Europe countries. However, there remains on-going trade in goods which could be used to carry out torture or capital punishment abroad.
This trade contradicts the values of the Council of Europe, the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN). In 2019, the EU adopted a regulation, which is legally binding on its 27 member states, aiming to limit and control the export of such goods.
Two years later, the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers adopted a recommendation seeking to expand similar limitations to all 46 of its member countries. The Council of Europe recommendation urged states to review and update their national laws and practices, to prevent the import, export and transit of such goods.
The recommendation specified which goods should be banned, encouraged states to destroy any remaining stocks, and listed certain chemicals which should be regulated and licenced. The EU is now planning to update and expand its 2019 regulation, and the Council of Europe is starting to assess how its own recommendation has been implemented by member states.
Furthermore, UN experts have also called for a binding legal agreement at the global level. All of this work is being carried out in close consultation with anti-death penalty and torture organisations including Amnesty International and the Omega Research Foundation. The Strasbourg workshop will provide an invaluable and timely opportunity to exchange information, experiences and ideas on how best to reduce this trade in the future.
