 The OPCAT was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 18 December 2002, and it entered into force on 22 June 2006.As of June 2019, the Protocol has 76 signatories and 90 parties.The idea for this scheme of torture prevention goes back to the Swiss Committee for the Prevention of Torture (today Association for the Prevention of Torture, APT), founded in 1977 by Jean-Jacques Gautier in Geneva.