Innovative website on prevention of torture & ill-treatment

Despite its universally recognised absolute prohibition, torture is still widely practiced today. There is a consistent lack of implementation of international obligations that can be attributed to a lack of political will, knowledge and capacities of national stakeholders. Hence, research, documentation and capacity development are urgently needed in advancing the prevention of torture and ill-treatment. The Human Dignity and Public Security Team at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights (BIM) was established in 2004 to support Manfred Nowaks mandate as UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Since then it has carried out many prestigious research and capacity development projects and acquired comprehensive expertise on the prevention of torture and ill-treatment. In 2015 the FWF financed the Project Revision of the Commentary on the UN Convention Against Torture (CAT Commentary), which started in January 2016 and will end in December 2017. It is implemented by Manfred Nowak and a team of researchers at or affiliated with the BIM. It has two main objectives: to publish a revised edition of the Commentary with Oxford University Press, and make the resource materials gathered during the drafting accessible via a thematic social bookmarking platform. While the CAT Commentary and other conventional publications on torture prevention aim to fill the research gap and offer legal guidance on the implementation of human rights obligations, this Project aims at disseminating such research using innovative publication formats and making scientific research more accessible to the widest possible audience. Building on idea of the thematic social bookmarking platform, this Project proposes three innovative formats in which to make the findings of the CAT Commentarys Project more accessible: Establish a completely new, modern and user-friendly website providing the ideal platform for disseminating the results of the CAT Commentary; Provide a comprehensive (thematic and country), user-friendly and sustainable database enabling to easily access relevant information through sophisticated filters and search functions; Disseminate torture prevention research findings through a media platform, e.g. via webinars and online discussions enabling the exchange with torture prevention experts and practitioners. Whereas the main objective of this Project is to disseminate the results of the CAT Commentary, the same innovative formats will be used for disseminating the results of other torture prevention projects. This Project will greatly increase the visibility of the CAT Commentary and provide an unprecedented open access platform for information and exchange (one-stop-shop), thereby serving human rights researchers, practitioners and the public at large, in the fight against torture and ill-treatment.