Torture: the rise of a global humanitarian crisis

Photograph: Andrew Ratto via Flickr 

The UN Convention Against Torture, published in 1984, established the grounds for modern rulings and legal discussions of torture. It encouraged all governments to sign and ratify the Convention, to make all acts of torture unlawful and punishable by appropriate penalties, and to recognise that under no circumstances should torture be deemed justified.

In a report published last year, Amnesty International reviewed the 30 years since the Convention was established. Their findings were significant: out of the 142 countries Amnesty followed that ratified the agreement, at least 79 still had torture cases in 2014, while a further 40 hadn’t adopted the Convention despite the global legal ban on torture deeming it compulsory.

In a global survey on attitudes to torture, Amnesty USA reported that from a poll taken of 21,000 people in 21 different countries, 82% of people believed there should be clear laws against torture. However, 36% believed that torture was justifiable under certain circumstances.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, members of armed forces and individuals considered a threat to national security are at high risk of torture in all regions of the world. Members of ethnic and religious minorities, people of diverse sexual orientations and the poor are also deemed to be at high risk of serious mistreatment.

The immediate issue on a global scale is that the Convention and the legal framework that has subsequently been created have not been properly enforced around the world. Governments are required to act upon cases of torture as soon as it is brought to their attention. However, torture cases are often secretive, and it is understood that the actual level of torture worldwide is likely to be significantly higher than what is reported.

Torture of detainees in prison is common in many regions across the world, including Africa: whilst the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights is in place to prevent such cases, only 10 countries in the continent have actually criminalised it. The culture of torture perpetrated by police and security forces is by no means limited to Africa, however, and extends across the world to regions with some of the strictest measures against torture, including Europe and the Americas.

In many cases, where it is difficult to separate the police from the state and there is significant evidence for the involvement of a government in torture cases, the Convention and its subsequent developments have clearly not been influential enough for states to enforce safeguards against such acts. Amnesty International has reported that some countries, including Uzbekistan, are closed to the organisation and are often unwilling to release information about torture and their regulations against it.

While the UN Convention was a welcome and substantial step in the direction of fighting against worldwide torture, it is clear that more is needed on a global scale in order to enforce strict regulations in all countries. The definition of torture in the Convention—‘severe pain or suffering’ on a physical or mental basis—should be made less susceptible to subjective understanding, because ‘severe suffering’ is not a definitive term on a global scale. And finally, more should be done to align attitudes towards torture, and to make clear the fact that torture is unjustifiable in any circumstance: torture is not an issue of regional or national interpretation, but an issue of global human rights.

First published on The Global Panorama