Present Bureau members
Pétur Hauksson
Chair
Pétur Hauksson is a psychiatrist, who trained in Norway, Denmark and Iceland, in various hospital settings. He has mainly worked with victims of violence and other trauma, in an in-patient rehabilitation setting in Iceland. Pétur was also a consultant psychiatrist at a closed juvenile detention centre for a few years. He has also worked as a general practitioner. He has participated in various medical research projects, some of which he initiated.
Pétur was a member of the CPT from 2000 to 2011 and was one of its Vice Presidents. He has participated in numerous CPT visits, first as a member of the committee and later after his 12 years as a member, he continued as an expert assisting CPT delegations on their visits.
He has also participated in many other visits by other monitoring bodies and has carried out training for monitors and for prison health care staff in several countries.
For half a century now, Pétur has been active in many mental health and human rights NGOs in several countries and has joined their fights for improvements in the care and rights of the mentally ill and others.
He has been the Chairperson of the Independent NPM Observatory since 2022.
Patrick Marest
Treasurer
Born in 1963 in Paris, Patrick Marest is a human rights activist. His career has been dedicated to defending people deprived of their liberty, influencing public policies on imprisonment, transforming prison practices and preventing torture.
In 1995, he founded the French section of the International Prison Observatory (OIP), serving as its Executive Director until 2011. He has coordinated reports on prison conditions (2000, 2003, 2005 and 2011) and advocacy campaigns: the right to privacy for prisoners (1997), external monitoring of prisons (1999), and the National Conference on Prison Conditions (2006). He developed various resources to enable prisoners to understand and assert their rights: the Prisoner’s Guide (1996, 2000, 2004) and the Guide for Those Leaving Prison (2006).
In collaboration with the Council of Europe, this publishing initiative has been extended to Tunisia to support the Tunisian NPM: the Prisoner’s Guide (2019) and the Handbook on Prison Law (2019 and 2021). In 2021, it helped design 30 pilot projects for the prison service. Between 2021 and 2023, in partnership with the UNDP, it focused on the practical application of standards, the training of professionals and cooperation between institutions and civil society.
At the request of the French Development Agency, his work expanded to Madagascar in 2020, leading to the design of a pilot project for a multi-service platform aimed at promoting respect for rights and the reintegration of prisoners; Humanité et Inclusion (an international NGO) has been implementing this project on a trial basis since December 2025.
From 2016 onwards, his scope of action has extended to the prevention of torture: in partnership with NPM Obs, it focuses on the practical conditions for the effectiveness of National Preventive Mechanisms (NPMs), whilst in partnership with Les Ingénieurs des Droits de l’Homme, it focuses on the training of their members.
Markus Jaeger
Secretary
A banker, Markus studied philosophy, law and political sciences in Germany, France and Switzerland and became teaching assistant of public international law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.
In 1989, he joined the Council of Europe (CoE) and was tasked with reforming the European Social Charter's monitoring system, developing administrative law in Eastern Europe, assisting the President of Albania and drafting anti-corruption conventions, before becoming Deputy Head of the Secretary General’s Monitoring Unit.
From 2000 until his resignation shortly after 9/11, he was Deputy Director of Legal Affairs, then Acting General Counsel, of Interpol.
The CoE took him back as Deputy Director of the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights, tasked inter alia with relations with the national human rights structures in the 47 member States. With the help of Silvia Casale, he created the “Peer-to-Peer Project” (now “European NPM Project”) in support of new NPMs, before heading the CoE’s Migration Co-ordination.
In 2013, he was shortlisted by the European Parliament for the post of European Ombudsman but lost to Emily O’Reilly.
Heading the Independent Human Rights Bodies Division, he represented the CoE in the Consultative Forum of Frontex and the Management Board of the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency. He served as Deputy Special Adviser of the Secretary General for Ukraine, created the Nafplion Group of Ombudsmen to monitor forced return operations, co-chaired with the Human Rights Commissioner of the Russian Federation a Project for public monitoring of places of detention and supported the creation of NPM Obs.
At the end of 2019, he left the CoE to found Jaeger & Associates, human rights consultants. He joined the board of NPM Obs and became its executive director, and co-founded an NGO called Human Rights Engineers. He teaches NGO law at the University of Strasbourg.