Nisreen Zerikat, Jordan NCHR

The solid, metallic thud of heavy prison doors closing can be an ominous sound for most people. For Nisreen Zerikat, from Jordan’s National Centre for Human Rights (NCHR), it is part of her daily life.

“We visit all the places of detention in Jordan. We visit the prisons, administrative detention centres, military prisons, juvenile centres and psychiatric facilities. We have that authority to undertake ‘on the spot’ visits’ and our goal is to prevent torture,” she says.

Six years ago Nisreen was working as a lawyer, handling civil and criminal cases, when she received an invitation to join the NCHR, which was in the process of being established. She became one of its very first staff members.

“I was very interested to work as a lawyer in the area of human rights but I had very little direct experience. And the NCHR was also very new. We really built up from nothing.”

Nisreen started in the Complaints Department and one of the issues that soon became apparent was the treatment of prisoners, which would often lead to riots.

“I remember going into one prison and there was a guard beating a prisoner with a stake. I asked him ‘what are you doing?’ and he said ‘this is nothing, this is usual in a prison.’ So I decided that we should start to work closely on this issue.”

Today Nisreen oversees the NCHR’s monitoring program of places of detention and coordinates an annual report on prison conditions, which is heavily referenced in reports produced by international human rights groups such as Amnesty International.

Activist

“Working for the protection of human rights in prisons, working for the prevention of torture – it’s one of the most difficult areas of work in Jordan,” Nisreen says.

She has faced pressure over the NCHR’s public criticism of the prison system and has also received anonymous threats.

“It’s not easy to work on this file. But this is our role and this is our mandate. It’s important that our reports are available to everybody.

“In this work, in working for the protection of the rights of prisoners, I think of myself as a human rights activist, not just as an employee of the NCHR,” Nisreen says.

Despite the obstacles, she is encouraged by a number of positive developments that have occurred in the past few years.

Cooperation

According to Nisreen, many of these changes are the result of building a strong and cooperative relationship with the Public Security Directorate (PSD).

“The fact that the fact that we can visit any prison, police station, any administrative detention centre, at any time – this is satisfying and helps us in our work for the prevention of torture,” she says.

“Also the PSD has begun to build up new prisons, which are in accordance with international standards.

“And we have also established a human rights office in one of the prisons – Swaqa Prison, one of the biggest prisons in Jordan – so this is progress too.”

The NCHR also conducts weekly training programs at the police academy, discussing the UN Convention Against Torture and other international human rights conventions that Jordan has ratified.

“Now some officers are talking about human rights, they know their duties, what they should do and what they should not do, and I can say that the treatment in prisons is actually better now,” says Nisreen.

'Karama'

Another major development has been the establishment of the ‘Karama’ (Dignity) Project, which was established in 2008 and will run until 2010.

The project aims to eradicate torture and ill-treatment through preventive approaches and by ensuring that those acts are criminalised, investigated, prosecuted, punished and redressed.

It is a collaborative venture, involving the NCHR, the PSD, the Ministry of Justice and the ‘Mizan’ Law Group for Human Rights, a local NGO, along with international partners from Denmark.

“Karama is a dream for us,” says Nisreen, who serves as the project’s national coordinator.

“It is important to start to talk about torture and to start to change community attitudes because some people still think that to beat a prisoner is usual, it’s not torture,” she says.

“And we are training the lawyers, we are starting to talk about compensation for victims of torture, we want to amend the legislation and to promote Jordan’s ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture.”

According to Nisreen, the positive engagement of the PSD and the Ministry of Justice in the project is critical in bringing about long-term change.

“I believe it will improve the situation,” she says. “The public bodies certainly want to engage with this project, they want to say that they also refuse torture.”