The debate on the International Criminal Court (ICC) is in many ways a testament to the progress that has already been achieved in getting governments to take torture seriously, says Theo van Boven, a former UN special rapporteur on discrimination and the treatment of minorities.

"When torture was mentioned in the General Assembly or elsewhere, to attracted protest, even when countries were not mentioned," van Boven said at a discussion on torture on Friday. "It was not done."

In the early 1970s, he added, widespread criticism of torture - first in Chile under Gen. Augusto Pinochet and later in apartheid South Africa - ended the silence on the subject at the UN, but the world body's focus was "still primarily on prevention". Now, the conference to establish the ICC underway in Rome is putting the spotlight on punishing torturers and seeking redress for victims, he said.

That shift marks an important change, given that many human rights activists believe that governments still treat torture less than seriously.  "The question of torture is really neglected internationally," said Guillaume Ngefa of the Geneva-based Association for the Prevention of Torture. Only 104 out of 193 governments worldwide have ratified the 1984 Convention against Torture, making it the least-ratified of major human-rights conventions, Ngefa argued.

The problem is not even that countries oppose measures to punish or prohibit torture, Ngefa contended, whether in the 1984 convention or in discussions here on the ICC statute, but that they do not act strongly to enforce them. One of the consequences is that many torture victims still feel reluctant to come forward to air their charges. Cecile Porta of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture argued that victims of the Mobutu dictatorship in the former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) remain unwilling to testify against former Zairean officials - even though Mobutu was ovethrown and died in exile last year.

"Our clients do not feel safe," Porta said. "Even abroad, they fear reprisals from Mobutu's people ... Mobutu's intelligence services still persist."

Another result of torture victims' fears is that, as Yael Danieli, a psychologist at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, contended, there are no reliable statistics for torture cases worldwide.

According to the London-based group Redress, instances of torture have been reported in recent years in at least 99 countries, and are widespread in at least 40. The ICC statute can benefit torture victims greatly if it takes concrete measures to address victims' rights, argued professor Naomi Roht-Arriaza of the University of California. 

Van Boven has set up several guidelines for victims' rights that could be adopted by the ICC drafters, including the creation of an authoritative record, reparations that include but are not restricted to financial compensation, and concrete steps to prevent any repetitions. Redress has pushed for several provisions which are being taken seriously at the ICC negotations, such as paragraphs that would allow written or oral testimony from victims and other interested persons and that would let the Court determine damages for victims.

Some governments have worried about letting the ICC determine financial damages, and much of the language about providing redress for victims remains subject to debate. But van Boven argued that reparations was about far more than financial factors. "In meetings I had with victims, it was extremely important that the truth be revealed ... It was more important than financial compensation," he said.

In many ways, even Van Boven's contribution to the debate on victims at Rome is a sign of the changing international discourse on torture. At the ICC conference, many of his proposals for restitution for victims are serving as the basis for negotiations. Just last decade, however, the then-UN rapporteur's work on behalf of torture victims so offended some governments that they prevailed upon then-UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar to dismiss him, said journalist Iain Guest of 'On the Record'. Farhan Haq/IPS