Publications

The study "Présumé.e innocent.e ? Étude sur la détention préventive en Côte d'Ivoire" was co-authored by CERDAP², FIACAT and ACAT-CI, as part of the implementation of the project to combat unjustified preventive detention supported by the European delegation in Côte d'Ivoire.While international human rights protection texts do not prohibit the use of preventive detention, they do remind us that freedom is the rule and confinement the exception. In 2014, the Commissioner to the ACHPR and Special Rapporteur on Prisons and Conditions of Detention in Africa made this observation: "Pretrial detainees are often in the shadow of the criminal justice system because their detention and treatment are not subject to the same levels of oversight as convicted prisoners. Prisoners on remand are subjected to conditions of detention that do not respect their right to life and dignity, and are vulnerable to human rights violations", so it is the legal and material conditions governing this practice that need to be studied. The legal analysis cannot do without that of the social representations of pre-trial detention, nor of the judicial practices inherent in its quasi-systematic use.Consideration of all the issues linked to pre-trial detention therefore requires them to be placed within a broader reflection on the meaning of penal reform, and to question prison as a political project.The study has thus put into perspective the dynamics on which local actors are likely to be able to draw in order to extend and perpetuate their actions in favour of respect for judicial guarantees.

In many cases, religion is less the object of direct reference than of culturalization. Such is the case with the invocation of Europe's Christian identity by many populists: it is less a matter of belief than of belonging. This "strategic" use of religion is carefully analyzed, drawing on the experiences of Austria, Italy and Russia.