REDRESS and Partners Welcome Bangladesh’s Steps to Strengthen Safeguards Against Torture

REDRESS, Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST), the Association for the Prevention of Torture (APT), and the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) welcome several landmark decisions by the Council of Advisers which will help to entrench international legal human rights standards into domestic law, and strengthen efforts to monitor and prevent violations of human rights including torture committed by law enforcement agencies.

On 10 July 2025, the Council of Advisers approved Bangladesh’s proposed accession to the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT), which aims to create a system of regular, independent visits to places where people are deprived of their liberty and to strengthen protections through national and international monitoring.

Accession to OPCAT will lay the foundation for setting up an independent National Preventive Mechanism (NPM), empowered to monitor deprivation of liberty. The OPCAT also foresees visits by the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT).

BLAST, REDRESS, APT and IRCT call for prompt establishment of a genuinely independent and adequately resourced NPM, with the multidisciplinary skills necessary to carry out its mandate. We also call for concrete steps to implement comprehensive police reforms, drawing on recommendations made by the Police Reform Commission established by the Interim Government, and by the UN Fact Finding Mission in its 2025 report.

We call on the government to ensure that such reforms are taken forward as an urgent priority to address entrenched patterns of abuse and impunity.

On 24 July 2025, the Council of Advisers approved a proposal to amend the Code of Criminal Procedure, to make it mandatory to notify a detainee’s family, friend, or lawyer within 12 hours of arrest.

This early notification of arrest was one of the guidelines demanded by the Appellate Division in a case known as the ‘section 54 case’ brought by BLAST back in 2016 (BLAST v Bangladesh 8 SCOB [2016] AD). Most of the other recommendations made by the Court have never been adopted.

We welcome this new proposal, and look forward to other measures being introduced to act as safeguards against torture and ill-treatment.

Background:

Article 35(5) of the Constitution of Bangladesh, 1972 expressly prohibits torture and cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment.

Bangladesh ratified the Convention against Torture in 1998, and adopted stand-alone legislation to address torture in 2013. To date, however, of the 50 cases filed under the Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention) Act,2013, only one conviction has been secured (and that remains under appeal). Urgent and coordinated action is required to prevent and punish acts of custodial torture and ill-treatment.

BLAST (Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust) is working with partners from the United Against Torture Consortium (including REDRESS, the Association for the Prevention of Torture (APT), and the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) to respond to the crisis in Bangladesh that began in July 2024 by seeking legal and policy reforms for accountability and reparation for torture, and enhancing survivors’ access to justice and reparation.

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