22 May 1991
J Wake Esq
Home Office
50 Queen Anne's Gate London
270-2484
EXTENSION OF THE UN CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE TO THE UK ISLANDS
1. You wrote on 29 April with the news that Guernsey had now
enacted legislation to enable us to extend the United Kingdom's
ratification of the Torture Convention (CAT) to them.
As you
2. We are now in a legal position to go ahead with the extension
to all the Islands (and to Bermuda) but it may well take longer than
we had originally hoped to be able to extend to Hong Kong.
are aware the Convention contains no article to provide for
extra-territorial extension and although we felt, at the time of
Mainland ratification, that we could ratify in two stages we would
certainly not wish to do it in three (Mr Rankin, FCO Legal Adviser
wrote to your Legal Adviser on
1989 about this).
3.
Given the political importance of the extension to Hong Kong
and our wish not to risk any legal objection to our extension (which
would certainly be increased if we
increased if we were to do it in isolation) we
will not be proceeding with the extension to the UK Islands yet. I
will let you know as soon as
we are able to do so.
HRQAAR