OSCE roadmap against torture: implementation is what counts
Switzerland bundles existing standards into 18 points. Nothing in it is bindingly new – which is precisely why oversight, investigations and political accountability matter.
At the Warsaw Human Dimension Conference, Switzerland presented a roadmap for preventing and eradicating torture. The paper of the Swiss OSCE chairmanship comprises 18 action points. Its most important sentence, however, stands between the lines: in Europe and Central Asia, the prohibition of torture is not primarily a problem of knowledge. It is a problem of implementation.
All 57 OSCE participating States have committed themselves to the absolute prohibition of torture. Yet torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment continue to be documented within the OSCE region as well. The roadmap addresses precisely this divergence between stated commitment and practice. That makes it more than a diplomatic signal, but less than a new law.
From principle to concrete procedure
The 18 points range from arrest and detention through interrogations to the investigation of torture allegations and to reparations for those affected. Among the measures named are unrestricted respect for the prohibition of torture, an end to secret or incommunicado detention, stronger rights for detained persons, non-coercive interrogation methods and independent monitoring mechanisms for places of detention.
This is deliberately broad in scope. People do not become vulnerable only during an interrogation. Risks also arise at the first arrest, in access to legal counsel, in pre-trial detention, or wherever no one regularly and independently examines how people are treated within an institution. It matters equally whether allegations are effectively investigated and whether those affected receive access to reparations and rehabilitation.
The roadmap arranges these elements in a sequence intended to be practically usable for authorities, police forces, the judiciary, prison administrations and supervisory bodies. It therefore formulates not a substitute for national laws, but a checklist for state practice: where is a safeguard missing? Who monitors it? What happens when a suspicion of ill-treatment arises?
No new law – and that is precisely its limit
The Swiss chairmanship explicitly stresses that the roadmap creates no new norms. It consolidates international standards, existing legal obligations, political commitments and proven practices into an action-oriented reference document.
That is a strength, because states do not first have to wait for a new treaty. They can use the named measures in training, procedural rules, oversight and investigations directly as a benchmark. But it is also the clear limit of the document: a roadmap neither orders a criminal investigation nor makes a detention facility more transparent by itself. Its effect depends on political will, trained personnel, independent institutions and the readiness to pursue misconduct.
The OSCE had already highlighted this connection at an expert conference in June. There, safeguards and accountability, prevention, and access to justice and rehabilitation were the focus. People are particularly at risk in the period after an arrest or in police custody, when effective safeguards and oversight are lacking. The new roadmap now condenses this discussion into a catalogue of steps.
The Swiss perspective does not begin in Warsaw
For Switzerland, the document is part of its 2026 OSCE chairmanship, whose priorities include democracy, the rule of law and human rights. It is therefore also about the credibility of a foreign policy that does not merely point to principles but presses for their application.
The lesson applies at home as well. The National Commission for the Prevention of Torture (NKVF) has a statutory mandate to examine the situation of persons deprived of liberty and to visit places of detention regularly. Its existence is not a certificate that there are no problems anywhere. Rather, it shows what the roadmap demands: preventing torture requires independent observation, including where a state under the rule of law recognises its rules in principle.
For ordinary Swiss citizens, the roadmap creates no new individual entitlements. Its significance lies elsewhere. It makes visible that human rights do not begin with a ruling by an international court. They are decided in everyday procedures – in the first conversation with the police, in access to medical help, in an independent visit to a cell, and in the question of whether an allegation remains without consequence.
The 18 points are therefore not the conclusion of a debate, but a benchmark for it. A roadmap only becomes politically relevant once states allow themselves to be measured against it: through comprehensible rules, independent oversight and consequences for ill-treatment. The absolute prohibition of torture already stands. What counts is whether it also applies where no one is watching.
Sources
- FDFA: Swiss OSCE Chairmanship presents roadmap on the prevention and eradication of torture: https://www.eda.admin.ch/de/newnsb/AZZ08RKVLvhA
- FDFA: Roadmap on the Prevention and Eradication of Torture: https://www.eda.admin.ch/en/publication?id=Og0yV5eIkcv1
- OSCE/ODIHR: expert conference on torture prevention and impunity: https://www.osce.org/chairpersonship/666112
- National Commission for the Prevention of Torture: legal basis: https://www.nkvf.admin.ch/de/rechtliche-grundlagen
- FDFA: torture prevention: https://www.eda.admin.ch/de/folterpraevention
