The Convention promotes, protects, and ensures “the inherent dignity of the human person” providing that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Unlike other international agreements and declarations condemning the practice of torture, the CAT provides a definition of torture. State parties are required to “take measures to end torture within their territorial jurisdiction, and to criminalize all acts of torture.” In addition, they are forbidden from “expelling, returning, or extraditing a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he or she would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”
The Convention established the Committee Against Torture to review reports submitted by State parties in order to “monitor State compliance with Convention obligations, investigate allegations of systematic violations by State parties, make recommendations for improving compliance, and submit annual reports to CAT parties and the UN General Assembly.”
The Optional Protocol to the Convention establishes “a preventive system of regular visits to places of detention, convinced that the protection of persons deprived of their liberty against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment can be strengthened by non-judicial means of a preventive nature.”
The CAT was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1984 (resolution 39/46). Consisting of 33 articles, the Convention entered into force on 26 June 1987 after it had been ratified by 20 states.
The Optional Protocol was adopted on 18 December 2002, after the UN General Assembly determined that further measures are necessary to achieve the purpose of the Convention. The Optional Protocol entered into force on 22 June 2006.
Canada has ratified the Convention but not the Optional Protocol.