The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is not the only international treaty that recognises rights for women. Members of the International Action Hub are writing a series of articles on the many different international treaties to which New Zealand is a signatory and how this impacts women and girls.
The United Nations' Convention Against Torture & Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) was adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by UN General Assembly resolution 39/46 of 10 December 1984 and entered into force on 26 June 1987. New Zealand ratified the CAT on 10 December 1989.
The Optional Protocol to the CAT seeks to prevent torture and other forms of ill-treatment through the establishment of a system of regular visits to places of detention carried out by independent international and national bodies. It was adopted by resolution A/RES/57/199 on 18 December 2002 at the 57th session of the UN General Assembly and entered into force on 22 June 2006. New Zealand ratified the Optional Protocol on 14 March 2007.
In Aotearoa New Zealand both are administered by the Ministry of Justice. The Office of the Ombudsman is designated to examine and monitor the treatment of persons in prisons and refers to various international treaties and guidelines when doing so, including CEDAW and UN Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders (the ‘Bangkok Rules’).At the United Nations, the Committee Against Torture is the body of ten independent experts that monitors implementation of the CAT and the Optional Protocol.
The Convention absolutely prohibits torture and other acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. States parties agree to prevent acts of torture in connection with activities that include:
- returning, expelling or extraditing someone to another country where there are
grounds to believe they will face torture; - arrest, detention and imprisonment;
- interrogation; and
- the training of police (civil or military), medical staff, public officials and anyone
else who may be involved in the arrest, detention and questioning of a person.
The Convention also covers prisons and, during the last review into New Zealand’s compliance with its obligations (2023), one of the issues that the Human Rights Commission raised was the disproportionate representation of Māori throughout the criminal justice and State care systems, the usage of non-lethal weapons, solitary confinement, segregation, and restraint in prisons. The then-Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Saunoamaali’i Karanina Sumeo pointed out that “our places of detention are simply not living up to the aspirations expressed in government policy documents and declarations, nor are they meeting international human rights standards.”
Most recently in Aotearoa, the Convention has been cited during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. The Royal Commission found that many of the 362 children who went through the Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital Child and Adolescent Unit between 1972 and 1978 did not have any form of mental illness yet were subjected to unmodified electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) or paraldehyde injections. The Committee against Torture found New Zealand in breach of its obligations under the Convention and in July 2024 the Government formally acknowledged that torture had occurred at the Lake Alice Unit as defined in the Convention and that it would provide redress to survivors.
By
Megan Hutching
WILPF Aotearoa, wilpf.nz
NCWNZ International Action Hub
To read more articles from The Circular (July-August 2025) issue 653, click on the tag below.