Is Someone Being Tortured in Your Neighborhood?

Sixty countries around the world allow the United Nations to review their prisons and other domestic detention facilities for potential acts of torture. The United States does not.

Sixty countries have agreed to establish independent panels to oversee their detention facilities to make sure that torture is not occurring there. The United States has not.

Torture may be happening right now in police stations, immigrant detention centers, and prisons, right in your neighborhood.

You can take action to end it. Sign the petition below, calling on President Obama to sign the United States onto the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT).

OPCAT is a United Nations agreement to prevent torture around the world. England, Germany, France, Chile, and Argentina are among the 60 countries that have ratified OPCAT, while the United States has not. Countries that join OPCAT agree to establish independent panels to oversee detention centers and to let the United Nations review their domestic detention facilities.

This December, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) will meet with representatives of the Obama administration and will urge the president to sign OPCAT. NRCAT’s leaders will bring to that meeting the list of people who have signed the petition below, to show the administration that there is strong public support for OPCAT. Now is the time to speak out — sign the petition today.

Petition

Join the Treaty: The United States Should Act to Prevent Torture Everywhere

Torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment are contrary to our common religious belief in the fundamental dignity of each human being. We call upon the U.S. government, once a leader in the effort to end the use of torture, to reclaim that role by signing and ratifying the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT).

One of the most important steps a nation can take to end torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment is to provide independent oversight of the conditions in which people are detained. By creating mechanisms that can prevent torture, including international inspection teams, OPCAT builds upon the prohibition against torture contained in the Convention against Torture, a treaty to which the United States is already a party and which is U.S. law. OPCAT requires each nation that ratifies the treaty to develop its own independent mechanism for monitoring detention facilities, including prisons and police stations.

We believe that if the United States joins OPCAT and provides robust oversight of its places of detention, it will be significantly more difficult for cases of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment to occur within the United States. Ratifying OPCAT would also enhance our government’s effectiveness in urging other countries to end their use of torture.

As people of many faiths and creeds, we oppose torture. We call upon our government to do everything it can to prevent torture everywhere. We call upon the president to sign OPCAT, and we call upon the U.S. Senate to ratify it.

Learn more about the National Religious Campaign Against Torture

Linda Gustitus on Preventing Torture Everywhere from NRCAT on Vimeo.