Interview with Jens Modvig
This podcast was recorded in the summer of 2017
Transscript
Speaker 1: The following podcast is a presentation of the Washington College of Law at American University. Any unauthorized use or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Diego: We are delighted to have here the presence in the Washington College of Law American University, Jens Modvig. Dr. Modvig is currently Chair of the UN Committee Against Torture and Lecturer here in our Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian law in the law school. Additionally, you are the Director of Dignity, a very important nongovernmental organization that fights against torture in Denmark. Also, you have played a very important role not only working within the committee, but also in seeing society, organization in bringing awareness to many topics. Not only from the legal perspective but I would think very very importantly, from a medical perspective. This is an issue that is intrinsically linked with many disciplines and something that we for sure are gonna be talking right now. Again, thank you very much Jens to be here to accept sharing your experience. First of all, I would like you to present yourself and tell us a little bit about your experience in the field of human rights.
Jens: Thank you very much Diego. It's a pleasure to be here and take part in this important program. I actually started entering the work against torture 23 years ago when I was employed in the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, IRCT. Firstly as a Medical Consultant and later on as its Secretary General.
This work is essentially focusing on rehabilitation of torture victims and while my organization Dignity Danish Institute Against Torture was one of the first centers to provide rehabilitation. More and more this work has also included prevention of torture. And in my view these two things go hand in hand and as you already indicated, they are two key professions here that need to be involved in the fight against torture. And these are actually Lawyers and Doctors.
The prevention work is both in my situation related to developing countries where we have the needed support in my organization for working with monitoring places of detention. What are called preventing monitoring places of detention, as well as medical legal documentation of torture. In both of these things we see lawyers and doctors go hand in hand.
If we monitor places of detention, a lot of the problems and the preventive possibilities are related to health of the detainees. Or lack of access to health. And the same actually applies to documentation and this is what I hope to make clear to the students later today. That exactly the question of documenting what happened and how it affected the individual is again, a medical legal endeavor and is something that involves both doctors and lawyers.
I would say today much more of my work is focused on prevention and I had the pleasure some years ago to be elected to the committee against torture. Which essentially works with the same issues, topics like fundamental legal safeguards, medical examination on admission to criminal justice institutions. In a way, I feel that two of my works, the work for Dignity and the work for the committee is quite well consolidated and integrated.
Diego: Very good and you mentioned you're working the committee against torture, which is an emblematic Institution in the fight against this heinous practice in international law. And want to ask you in general, about that working methods of that committee because it has very interesting tools that it can deploy in many ways and like to pick your brain on some of these tools that a committee has used and continue to use under its mandate.
Jens: There are of course some features that apply to all of the treaty parties, which also applies to the committee against torture. And that is for instance, that the accountability and the scrutiny is public. It's actually very public. All the letters that go between the committee and state parties, all the sessions that we have are webcast. Everything is put on the internet so it's for everybody actually to follow what goes on in this accountability, scrutiny and constructive dialogue.
And I think this public feature is one of the working methods that is quite important. For the committee specifically, we have recently strengthened our follow up procedure and in my view, of course one of the challenges that we have is that once the committee has issued concluding observations, recommendations, that they actually take it seriously and implement it.
And one of the novelties that we have included in our follow-up guidelines is that we invite state parties to present an implementation plan for the concluding observations. And we are looped by the beginning to see the result of that. And I think that's a strength in our working method because it focuses not only on the reportings every four years and the sessions with the committee, but even more on the implementation that takes place between those reporting cycles.
While it remains to be seen how strong this feature will be, I'm quite encouraged that this is a working method that will increase the impact of the committee's work.
Diego: Very good. And you mentioned this crucial issue of implementation and that takes me to think about Civil Society. And its role in many aspects of course of the work that human rights committee, but specifically of the issue of implementation. What can you tell us about it?
Jens: I think the committee relies to a very large degree on the work of Civil Society. First and foremost of course on the input that Civil Society provides for the reviews of countries by the committee. Informs and share the reports. When we reviewed the United States, we had 68 shadow reports submitted by Civil Society. And it's easy to understand that this represents a wealth of perspectives and anchors that supplement what the state party in its report have told the committee.
But maybe even more the Civil Society then providing input also is playing a crucial role in the implementation. What we always say at the end of the concluding observations is that we encourage states to disseminate the concluding observations widely. But we have more and more seen that we rely on Civil Society to actually make this awareness of what the committee said and recommended.
And often Civil Society organizes media events and pick seminars, which bring to the knowledge of broader circles and even the population at large. What the committee said to the country. And of course this is an invaluable help to ensure that our conclusions are known and also, to put a pressure on the implementation. I cannot stress the significance that it has that the committee is able to benefit for Civil Society in almost all countries.
Diego: Very good and let me quickly now turn and final issue I think could be interesting to hear from you about that. The current challenges that the Committee Against Torture in the context of a treaty value system of the United Nations is facing. What can you tell us about that?
Jens: There are certain challenges, yes that we are facing. I would say one is more general and the other is specific. The general ones is to have reporting compliance, that all state parties that are obliged to report, that they actually do it. And some state parties pull out their compliance here and we have to increase our efforts to actually make some state parties report to the committee.
What we have done is to start reviewing countries in the absence of reports. And then that means that you cannot escape the accountability by not reporting because what happens is that the committee then will have to rely on the NGO information when issuing its conclusions. And essentially that might not be in the interest of all state parties.
Secondly, we just talked about the implementation and I think that is of course a challenge as well. But we are strengthening our work to push harder for actually implementing the provisions of the convention. But what is a more specific challenge and I think everybody within the human rights field acknowledges is the modification of basic rights that take place under the pretext of terrorism.
It's clear that the US war against terrorism and many other countries measures to fight terrorism and terrorists have meant that the emphasis on basic human rights have been less marked. What we see for instance in a key field is the fundamental legal safeguards on the deprivation of liberty. That is the right to a lawyer, the right to request and receive a medical examination to document injuries, the right to inform relatives of your whereabouts, etcetera.
These are reduced, these rights are reduced or not complied with when the offense persons are suspected of a security related or terrorist related crimes. And this is a slide that has a negative impact on the basic enjoyment of these fundamental legal safeguards. And this is very sad because it has been documented by research that exactly the enjoyment of the fundamental legal safeguards on depravation of liberty is one of the most effective preventive measures against torture.
If the lawyer's there, the chance that the officer will torture, the victim is reduced. So the challenge is here that many states and security sectors in the states feel that it's more important to be harsh on suspected terrorists than it is to comply with human rights. And the thing is it can probably be argued that it's the other way around.
The more we violate those basic human rights, the more chances that actually we will nurture security uproars or offenses that we'll then would have to deal with.
Diego: Very good, well you mentioned the importance of the work of interdisciplinarity. You have doctors, lawyers working particularly on this issue regarding fighting and torture. We are delighted to have you here. We want our lawyers to hear from other disciplines about how these other disciplines perceive, analyze, approach these same topics these narratives. These new [inaudible 00:13:04] crucial to complete real education in many of the areas that we teach here in the law school.
Finally, I would love to hear a little bit your perspective and your experience as a Medical Doctor within a committee of this nature in the UN. What would be some aspects in which you see there the interdisciplinarity merge with full power?
Jens: Well I think in the committee there's general recognition that fighting torture is not only a legal issue. I think that we have developed a practice and even a jurisprudence that emphasizes also a lot of the medical aspects of fighting torture and complying with the convention by the way.
For instance, the application to investigate and prosecute cases over this torture. This investigation is of course a legal, a criminal investigation. But it's an investigation that relies on medical evidence. And what the medical doctors could do here, what the lawyers can't actually to document the science and symptoms on the individual that can corroborate the story that torture took place.
And this is a very important collaboration where the doctors need to know what the lawyers in the Prosecutor's Office need. And the lawyers and prosecutors, they need to know what are the medical doctors and forensic doctors, the general doctors able to deliver. And they have to know this in order to make a full investigation and prepare cases as strong as possible.
And the same in fact applies in the monitoring of places of detention where the access to medical doctor when you arrive is one of the more important preventive measures that the doctor can receive allegations of torture. See signs and injuries that maybe took place in the police station where they came from and that the doctor has enough knowledge to report such cases to the competent authorities for further investigation.
I think that many other examples but the bottom line is that doctors and lawyers have to work together in order to fight torture.
Diego: Jens thank you very much for your views, for being available to talk with us a little bit about this crucial issues. And again, we are delighted to have you, the Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law this year and hope to continue working with you in the future.
Jens: Thank you very much.