RCT and the National Centre for Human Rights in Jordan completed
a training seminar on 11-13 January 2010 within the framework of
the Danish-Jordanian programme for torture prevention. This was the
third in a series of seminars conducted for the newly formed
Jordanian monitoring group, National Monitoring Team.
The team will help to prevent torture and other inhumane treatment
by surveying prisons and other detention places in Jordan. The
theme of the seminar was the UN standards for treatment of
prisoners with a particular emphasis on women prisoners.
The training included for example a one-day inspection of the women
prison in Jordan, Juweidah, in the outer part of the capital Amman.
Juweidah are accommodating 254 women prisoners, of whom only half
of them have got a sentence. The other prisoners are held in
custody for the most part, waiting - often in months - for their
case to be brought to trial. The last third of the prisoners are
administratively detained. Among them are women who only committed
the crime of violating the moral codes of their family, for
instance by disapproving an arranged marriage. Those women are
often placed in the Jordanian prisons as a 'protective step' to
shield them from the acts of revenge of their families, such as
'honour killings', because of the disgrace they have brought over
their families.
The prison inspection was carried out by the National Monitoring
Team, which consists of some 30 independent doctors, psychiatrists,
lawyers, journalists etc. With assistance from international
experts the inspection first of all had to train the monitoring
team in covering, how the prisoners are treated. The difficult
point is to get this sensitive information without putting the
prisoner at risk of later reprisals from the prison authorities.
For example it was covered whether the prisoners have been exposed
to physical assaults or threats from the prison staff or from other
co-prisoners.
Furthermore the prison visit aimed to make the National Monitoring
Team gain insight into the general prison conditions inside the
walls. Do the prisoners get enough food and water? Can they get
medical care? Are their families allowed to visit them? Is the use
punishment cells and solitary confinement legal? Do the prisoners
enjoy protection of their privacy?
The monitoring team interviewed several Jordanian prisoners and
many of the 80 foreign prisoners, who mainly derive from Asia and
Latin America. The foreign inmates are often a vulnerable and
isolated group, because in many cases they neither understand the
local language nor do they have access to support and visits from
their families.
The training seminar is part of some ongoing Danish-Jordanian
efforts to build an independent, professional capacity in the
country, which can strengthen the protection for Jordan's over
7.000 prisoners from torture and other inhumane treatment. Whether
Jordanian prisoners are being treated in a humane way are judged
within the scale of the international UN standards, including the
UN convention about civil and political rights as well as the UN
minimum standards for the treatment of prisoners.
In the long term the monitoring team will extend its surveillance
of the 11 prisons in Jordan to also include police stations,
psychiatric hospitals and other places in Jordan, where people are
detained.
As part of the Karama-programme a five-day training workshop in
modern police investigation methods was carried out in Amman. The
20 participants are middle managers in the Jordanian police, and in
the future they will teach their colleagues in the Danish
investigation methods.
Written by Therese Rytter