At the end of April, the Slovak government will speak at the UN Committee against Torture in Geneva about the progress it has made in recent years towards the better protection of all of us from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The Convention against Torture binds it to do so.

We have therefore sent our report to the Committee today, drawing its attention to the shortcomings in this area, which particularly affect the Roma minority:

Forced sterilisation is among the acts of cruel and inhuman treatment prohibited by the Convention. The Committee has therefore been monitoring this issue in Slovakia for a long time. Our report informs it that despite the progress made by the Government in this regard in recent years – a compensation law that would bring justice to forcibly sterilized Roma women has still not been adopted.

Another serious problem, which the Committee has drawn the attention of the Slovak Government to in the past, is police violence and the shortcomings in its investigation. Based on our monitoring, the cases we have dealt with legally and the several judgments achieved in the European Court in Strasbourg, we therefore inform the Committee that these problems persist and are, in our view, of a deeply systemic nature.