Supporting cooperation with and training for police, the judiciary, and academia to increase protection against abuse of power and torture.
Background
National legal systems are meant play a central role in implementing human rights, yet we often find that the mechanisms needed to realize this intention are almost absent.
NCHR supports the judiciary's capacity to improve its human rights compliance by strengthening human rights knowledge among core actors within the chain of justice, including judges, prosecutors and the police. To this end we teach police detectives investigative interviewing methods that could contribute to prevent torture and errors of justice, and develop tool and resources to promote effective and human rights compliant investigations and inquiries. We cooperate with a number of UN and other international organisations, universities, NGO's and state parties in this work.
NCHR engages with leading researchers in the area of criminal investigations, evidence evaluation, and forensic interviewing. Our approach is to introduce the concept in our partner countries, and provide a group of dedicated fact-finders - primarily police detectives - with training and access to relevant literature and international research networks.
We also cooperate with the former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, professor Juan E. Méndez to promote international Principles on Effective Interviewing for Investigations and Information Gathering, also referred to "the Méndez Principles".
In my time as UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, I observed that the most frequent setting where torture and coercion take place is the course of the interrogation of suspects and for the purpose of obtaining confessions. - Professor Juan E. Méndez
Victims of wrongful convictions are subject to great suffering inflicted by the state, and often the actual perpetrators evade prosecution and conviction. This contributes to undermine the rule of law. Mistreatment of people in custody and coercion of suspects with the aim of making them confess is still commonplace, contributing to undermine the Rule of Law.