News & Reports
Monthly reports on torture prevention, OPCAT ratifications, UN treaty body sessions, and human rights documentation — sourced from OHCHR, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and ICET monitoring work.
Why Facilities Holding Transferred People Fall Within OPCAT Monitoring
A facility holding people transferred from another state is a place of detention like any other. In an OPCAT State Party it falls within the National Preventive Mechanism’s visiting mandate.
Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, arts. 1, 4, 19, 20; Convention against Torture, art. 3; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 9.Law Societies in Uganda Challenge the Arrival of Twelve Deportees From the United States
Al Jazeera reported that twelve people transferred from the United States arrived at Entebbe on 2 April 2026, and that the Uganda Law Society and East Africa Law Society brought a court challenge.
Al Jazeera, 'Legal groups condemn arrival of a dozen deportees from US to Uganda', 2 April 2026.Amnesty International Documents Continued Transfers to Eswatini Under US Removal Arrangement
Amnesty International has documented successive transfers of third-country nationals from the United States to Eswatini, where it reports the men are held at a maximum-security prison without ties to the country.
Amnesty International, 'Eswatini: Arrival of four more men under US unlawful removal deal', 11 March 2026; Amnesty International, 'Eswatini: Supreme Court ruling on legal access offers limited relief for US deportees', April 2026; Amnesty International, 'Eswatini: Fourth US third-country removal operation raises fresh human rights concerns', July 2026; Human Rights Watch, 'US/Africa: Expulsion Deals Flout Rights', 23 September 2025.Constructive Refoulement: When a Return Recorded as Voluntary Is Not a Free Choice
International law prohibits achieving by pressure what a state may not order directly. Where detention, destitution or indefinite limbo leave a protected person no real alternative to returning, the departure is not voluntary in law.
International Law Commission, Draft Articles on the Expulsion of Aliens (2014), art. 10(1); UNHCR, Voluntary Repatriation: International Protection; Committee against Torture, general comment on the implementation of article 3; EJIL:Talk!, 'Does international law prohibit constructive refoulement?'; International Journal of Refugee Law, vol. 35, no. 4, p. 419.Monitoring Organisations Document Detention of Transferred People on Arrival
Human Rights Watch and the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants have documented what happens to people on arrival in receiving countries. Conditions on arrival bear directly on whether a transfer is consistent with Article 3.
Human Rights Watch, 'US/Africa: Expulsion Deals Flout Rights', 23 September 2025; U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Third Country Deportations Tracker, figures as recorded to June 2026.