The High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms Bachelet, re-affirmed yesterday that “the State has a particular duty to protect inmates’ physical and mental health and well-being” in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
In this new environment, verifiable information on measures being taken by authorities or good practices adopted by specific countries can be difficult to find, analyse and compare.
The APT is responding to this challenge by launching an information hub of news and resources, including on how different actors in the criminal justice, penitentiary, healthcare and oversight spaces are responding to the COVID-19 situation around the world. The hub is designed to be, in the near future, a collaborative tool so that information can be fed into it directly by our partners, in particular National Preventive Mechanisms. Information can be found and sorted by country, relevant body or institution, specific detention issue, type of place of deprivation of liberty, by different persons in situations of vulnerability, and by source of information.
APT’s COVID-19 & persons deprived of liberty information hub complements our existing Detention Focus database which provides updated information and analysis on healthcare standards in prisons.