An Interview with Sir Malcolm Evans 

Former Chair of the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (SPT)

By Janna Beijers

Source: Hedi Benyounes via Unsplash

What was your role in (the development of) the SPT?

I have been a member of the SPT for the past 11 years and was elected chair early in 2011, a position I held until I left the SPT at the end of last year. Before this, I had been intimately involved in the idea of the SPT. I first got interested in preventive visiting places of detention when the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (the CPT) was established back in the late 1980s, which I studied as an academic. I followed the negotiating process of the OPCAT throughout the 1990s and advocated for its adoption. So, the OPCAT has been a big part of my life for almost 30 years throughout which I have seen it from different angles as an academic, advocate, and as member of the SPT.  

More...