Photo: The conference takes place in Warsaw.

   Today the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights opens its annual two-week conference – Human Dimension Implementation Meeting. The meeting is the largest yearly human rights gathering in Europe bringing together representatives of human rights organizations from OSCE participating states to discuss the implementation of human dimension commitments undertaken during earlier meetings or on the highest level by the Committee of Ministers. As usual, the Committee against Torture will report on the issues of prohibition of tortures, right to a fair trial, increasing human rights awareness as well as the right to association and peaceful assemblies.

The OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting brings together hundreds of government representatives, experts and human rights defenders to review progress made by OSCE participating States in implementing their commitments in the field of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. The meeting is the largest yearly human rights gathering in Europe. The Committee against Torture hopes that this year’s meeting can make an important contribution to taking stock as to where the states stand in putting commitments into practice and elaborating new effective ways of solving existing problems.

This year, besides taking part in plenary sessions, the Committee against Torture together with its partner – IRCT – will organize a briefing devoted to the problem of tortures in Russia. We are going to report about the results of this activity on Wednesday, 30 September.