WICC2025-PID142-Ilina Taneva and Therese Rytter

Women in Prison View from the Council of Europe Perspective

Authors

Ilina Taneva

Deputy Head of the Criminal Law Division, Council of Europe, France

Ilina Taneva is Secretary to the Conferences of Directors of Prison Administrationas well as Secretary to the Council for Penological Co operation (PC CP), Council of Europe. She joined the Council of Europe Secretariat in 1997 and since then has been Secretary to several intergovernmental committees which elaborated standards in the field of penal and penitentiary law, prisons, probation and aftercare, crime prevention and juvenile justice. The major achievements in this area are the European Prison Rules (Committee of Ministers Rec(2006) 2, revised in 2020); The European Rules for juvenile offenders subject to sanctions or measures (CM/Rec (2008) 11); The Council of Europe Probation Rules (CM/Rec (2010) 1); The European Code of ethics for prison staff (CM/Rec (2012) 5); CM/Rec (2012) 12 on foreign prisoners; CM/Rec (2014) 4 on electronic monitoring; the 2016 CM Guidelines for prison and probation services regarding radicalisation and violent extremism; CM/Rec (2017) 3 on the European Rules on community sanctions and measures, CM/Rec (2018) 5 concerning children with imprisoned parents, CM/Rec(2018)8 on restorative justice in criminal matters and CM/Rec (2021)6 regarding the assessment, management and reintegration of persons accused or convicted of a sexual offence.

She has represented the Council of Europe as speaker at many international meetings, including meetings organised by the EU, UNODC, EuroPris, CEP, ICPA and GCTF.
She has MA in history, post graduate thesis on theory and history of art and culture (1979 1984) and LLM and ME on international law (1983 1988), Sofia University, Bulgaria.

Therese Rytter

Vice-President of CPT, Council of Europe, Denmark

Human rights lawyer with 25 years of experience in promotion and protection of international human rights, particularly the prevention and combatting of torture. Key engagements have included monitoring of places of detention in order to prevent torture in multiple jurisdictions, most notably as a member of CPT (2014-present) and its 2nd Vice-President (2019-present), and capacity building of NHRIs, NPMs and civil society in this field. In parallel, I have been involved in legislative and criminal justice sector reform aimed at strengthening the role of lawyers, prosecutors and judges in preventing, documenting and combating torture, and international norm-building to further develop the legal framework in the anti-torture field.

DIGNITY – Danish Institute against Torture, Legal Director and Director of Prevention & Accountability

07/2014- European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT)
Member and, since March 2019, 2nd Vice-President

01/2019- OSCE Human Dimension Mechanism (Moscow Mechanism), Expert

01/2008- United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT)
National Expert

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