The UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) is scheduled to visit Mozambique for the second time from 20 to 30 October 2025 to assess the country’s implementation of its previous recommendations.
“We are looking forward to evaluate how the Government of Mozambique has acted on the recommendations we made nearly a decade ago, following our 2016 visit,” said Chris Nissen, head of the SPT delegation. “We also look forward to seeing how the country’s national mechanism for preventing torture has improved in its structure and work.”
Mozambique ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT) in 2013.
During this mission, the delegation will visit prisons, police stations and other places where people are detained. It will meet with Government and other State officials, representatives of civil society and UN agencies. The delegation will also hold meetings and conduct joint visits with the Mozambican anti-torture watchdog, the National Human Rights Commission (Comissão National dos Direitos Humano), the official National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) of the country.
At the end of the visit, the delegation will present its confidential preliminary observations orally to the Government of Mozambique and to the National Preventive Mechanism. The SPT will then issue a report for the State Party, which will remain confidential until the national authorities request that it be made public, as was the case with the first report, which was welcomed.
Since it began operating in 2007, the SPT has been mandated to visit all States Parties to the OPCAT and to conduct unannounced visits to any places where people are or may be deprived of their liberty. To date, 95 States have ratified the Optional Protocol.
The SPT delegation will be composed of Andrew Christoffel NISSEN, Head of Delegation (South Africa), Uju AGOMOH (Nigeria), Paul LAM SHANG LEEN (Mauritius and Julia KOZMA (Austria), together with two Human Rights Officers from the SPT Secretariat.
Africa Fact: On bling culture, one seventeenth century visitor to southern African empire of Monomotapa, that ruled over this vast region, wrote that: “The people dress in various ways: at court of the Kings their grandees wear cloths of rich silk, damask, satin, gold and silk cloth; these are three widths of satin, each width four covados [2.64m], each sewn to the next, sometimes with gold lace in between, trimmed on two sides, like a carpet, with a gold and silk fringe, sewn in place with a two fingers’ wide ribbon, woven with gold roses on silk.”
Africa Fact: Southern Africans mined gold on an epic scale. One modern writer tells us that: “The estimated amount of gold ore mined from the entire region by the ancients was staggering, exceeding 43 million tons. The ore yielded nearly 700 tons of pure gold which today would be valued at over $7.5 billion.”
Easy Mac
Where do I go to post a FREE Event listing?
Devil Blade
Fun South African Fact: Mandela’s house on Vilakazi Street is now a museum. The man who the street was named after, Dr BW Vilakazi, was a poet, novelist and intellectual. He helped develop the written form of both isiZulu and siSwati and helped put together the isiZulu dictionary.