OSCE Centre supports training course for Kyrgyz human rights defenders on monitoring places of detention

JALAL-ABAD, Kyrgyzstan, 3 August 2009 - About 20 human rights activists are learning how they best can monitor places of detention in a two-day OSCE-supported training course that started today in Jalal-Abad province.

Organized by the non-governmental organization Spravedlivost with support of the OSCE Centre in Biskhek's Field Office in Osh, the course is part of an OSCE Centre project that supports penitentiary system reform and promotes human rights awareness in the Osh, Jalal-Abad and Batken provinces.

"The project has produced many positive outcomes, for example by helping to spark co-operation among authorities, the OSCE and local human rights NGOs that has improved the situation and conditions in the Jalal-Abad prison and other places of detention in the region," said Dimitri Manjavidze, the Human Dimension Officer at the OSCE Osh Field Office.

Valentina Gricenko, Chair of the NGO Spravedlivost, added: "Human rights activists and the Office of Ombudsman are exploring ways to set up a National Preventive Mechanism as required by the Optional Protocol to the U.N. Convention against Torture. The public monitoring groups established and trained within the project will be able to work as a part of this mechanism."

The Project, launched in 2006, is being implemented jointly by local institutions of the Justice Ministry, the Interior Ministry, the OSCE Centre and local Human Rights NGOs.