The United Nations human rights chief on Thursday welcomed a decision by the international body to enforce a treaty on torture, despite opposition from the United States.
Mary Robinson, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said the enforcement plan was ”an important step toward the establishment of a new international mechanism to prevent torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.
The protocol was passed late on Wednesday by a vote of 35-8 with 10 abstentions in the UN Economic and Social Council.
The United States, which had sought to reopen 10 years of negotiations on the document, abstained.
Washington’s attempts to block the protocol, which seeks to enforce a 1989 international treaty against torture, were widely criticised by human rights campaigners and US allies in Europe and Latin America.
Technically, the protocol seeks visits to prisons as a way to help enforce the anti-torture convention.
But the United States said elements of the plan were incompatible with the US Constitution. Privately, US diplomats said allowing outside observers into state prisons would infringe on states’ rights.
The United States was also concerned about allowing visits to terror suspects being held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
Such visits are still unlikely unless the United States chooses to adopt the protocol.
Human rights advocates and diplomats argued that the protocol was essential to enforce the international convention on torture passed 13 years ago and since ratified by about 130 countries, including the United States. – Sapa-AP