UN Torture Prevention Body To Visit Serbia

Geneva,10 June 2025

The UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) will conduct its first visit to Serbia from 15 to 21 June to assess the measures taken by the country to protect people deprived of liberty from torture and ill-treatment.

During the mission, the SPT delegation will visit prisons, police stations and other places where people are or may be deprived of their liberty. The delegation will meet with government officials, the Protector of Citizens (Ombudsman), representatives of civil society, and UN agencies. The delegation will also hold meetings and conduct joint visits with the national monitoring body, officially known as the National Preventive Mechanism (NPM).

“We will be there to see, to listen, and to examine the conditions in which prisoners, detainees, and all others deprived of their liberty are held. Our visit will focus on how safeguards against torture and ill-treatment are being implemented in practice, and how these protections can be further strengthened,” said Massimiliano Bagaglini, who is heading the SPT delegation. “A comprehensive national torture prevention system requires regular visits by an independent and well-resourced national detention monitoring body, and we will therefore also be looking at the functioning of the NPM in Serbia,” he added.

The SPT is mandated to visit all States Parties to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT), which Serbia ratified in 2006. At the end of the visit, the SPT will present its confidential preliminary observations to the Government of Serbia.

The SPT delegation will be composed of the following members of the Subcommittee: Massimiliano Bagaglini, Head of Delegation (Italy), Vasiliki Artinopoulou (Greece), Kalliopi Kambanella (Cyprus), Nika Kvaratskhelia (Georgia) as well as two Human Rights Officers from the SPT Secretariat.

© Scoop Media