Download or read book Tackling Torture written by Malcolm D. Evans and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2023-09-22 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How big a problem is torture? Are the right things being done to prevent it? Why does the UN appear at times to be so impotent in the face of it? In this vitally important work, Malcolm D. Evans tells the story of torture prevention under international law, setting out what is really happening around the world. Challenging assumptions about torture’s root causes, he calls for what is needed to enable us to bring about change. The author draws on over ten years’ experience as Chair of the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture to give a frank account of the remarkable capacities of this system, what it has achieved in practice, or not been able to achieve – and most importantly, why.

Download or read book Tackling Torture written by Malcolm D. Evans and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2023-01-03 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How big a problem is torture? Are the right things being done to prevent it? What does the UN do, and why does is appear at times to be so impotent in the face of torture? In this vitally important work, Malcolm Evans tells the story of torture prevention under international law, setting out what is really taking place in places of detention around the world. Challenging assumptions about torture's root causes, he calls for what is needed to enable us to be in a better position to bring about change. The author draws on over ten years' experience as the Chair of the United Nations Sub-Committee for Prevention of Torture to give a frank account of the remarkable capacities of this system, what it has achieved in practice, what it has not been able to achieve - and most importantly, why.

Download or read book Research Handbook on Torture written by Malcolm D. Evans and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-28 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Research Handbook is of great importance in an era where torture, whilst universally condemned, remains endemic. It explores the nature of the international prohibition of torture and the various means and mechanisms which have been put in place by the international community in an attempt to make that prohibition a reality. Edited by Chairs of the UN Committee against Torture and of the Subcommittee for the Prevention of Torture, this Research Handbook considers both the legal and medical dimensions of torture, as well as societal and philosophical perspectives. Contributions from experts with personal experience of working with torture victims and survivors in medical, legal and political settings survey practice within the UN and regional human rights systems, international criminal and domestic legal settings, and in medical and rehabilitative contexts. These expert perspectives combine to offer a unique range of insights into the realities of tackling torture in the contemporary world. Critical and timely, the Research Handbook on Torture will prove compulsive reading for students and scholars of human rights. Its practical dimension will also engage practitioners in the field, as well as legal and medical professionals working on torture-related issues.

Download or read book Human Rights and Democracy written by Great Britain: Foreign and Commonwealth Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report is a comprehensive look at the efforts of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to promote human rights around the world in 2012. It highlights the UK's human rights concerns in key countries and advances the promotion and protection of human rights as the focus of UK foreign policy. The publication is divided into nine sections: (1) Promoting and protecting human rights through the UN; (2) The human rights and democracy programme; (3) Promoting British values; (4) Human rights in safeguarding Britain's national security; (5) Human rights in promoting Britain's prosperity; (6) Human rights for British nationals overseas; (7) Working through a rules-based international system; (8) Promoting human rights in the overseas territories; (9) Human rights in 27 countries of concern. There is also a set of case studies, including DFID's work on economic and social rights, Egypt post-revolution, women and girls in India, Nigeria's response to terrorism, and the deployment of a UK team of experts to the Syrian border.

Download or read book Tackling the Trade in Tools of Torture and Execution Technologies written by and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Human Rights Norms in Other International Courts written by Martin Scheinin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the role and impact of human rights norms in international courts other than human rights courts

Download or read book Treating Victims of Torture and Violence written by Peter Elsass and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1997-11-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Torture is among the most disturbing and psychologically devastating of human behaviors. It dehumanizes its victims, leaving them with serious and lasting psychological wounds. Like other psychological trauma, torture frequently leaves in its wake denial and silence among both perpetrators and their victims. This communicative void creates a public and mental block that can make treatment of torture survivors very difficult. Treating Victims of Torture and Violence is the definitive manual for therapists treating victims of torture, prisoners of war, and casualties of forced migration. Divided into five sections dealing with basic concepts of torture--violence and aggression, the torture syndrome, psychotherapeutic treatment, the cultural psychology of torture syndrome, and cultural psychological treatment-- Treating Victims of Torture and Violence employs both classic psychoanalytic and cognitive- behavioral methods. Realizing that torture victims are frequently from different cultures than those of their therapists, Peter Elsass provides in-depth aid to therapists dealing with a multicultural clientele.

Download or read book Closing Ranks Against Accountability written by Emma Sinclair-Webb and published by Human Rights Watch. This book was released on 2008 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Turkey's well documented endemic problems of torture and its notoriously violent policing culture ought to be a thing of the past. Motivated to meet conditions attached to its prospective European Union accession, within the past five years Turkey has made important changes in law and in detention regulations, providing better safeguards for those held in places of detention. Over that period there was a recorded decrease in allegations of torture or ill-treatment of detainees held in the anti-terror departments of police stations. There are, however, signs of continuing problems of police violence, and a reported rise in overall complaints of torture and police violence since the beginning of 2007. At the core of the persistence of these phenomena is the culture of impunity. Historically, law enforcement officials were rarely if ever held to account, and still less often in a manner that reflected the gravity of the violations committed. Today, despite increased legal safeguards, law enforcement officers who flout them can still enjoy effective impunity when they are alleged to have abused or even unlawfully killed victims"--P. 1.

Download or read book Understanding Prisoner Victimisation written by Tom Daems and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Torture and Democracy written by Darius Rejali and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-08 with total page 865 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the most comprehensive, and most comprehensively chilling, study of modern torture yet written. Darius Rejali, one of the world's leading experts on torture, takes the reader from the late nineteenth century to the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, from slavery and the electric chair to electrotorture in American inner cities, and from French and British colonial prison cells and the Spanish-American War to the fields of Vietnam, the wars of the Middle East, and the new democracies of Latin America and Europe. As Rejali traces the development and application of one torture technique after another in these settings, he reaches startling conclusions. As the twentieth century progressed, he argues, democracies not only tortured, but set the international pace for torture. Dictatorships may have tortured more, and more indiscriminately, but the United States, Britain, and France pioneered and exported techniques that have become the lingua franca of modern torture: methods that leave no marks. Under the watchful eyes of reporters and human rights activists, low-level authorities in the world's oldest democracies were the first to learn that to scar a victim was to advertise iniquity and invite scandal. Long before the CIA even existed, police and soldiers turned instead to "clean" techniques, such as torture by electricity, ice, water, noise, drugs, and stress positions. As democracy and human rights spread after World War II, so too did these methods. Rejali makes this troubling case in fluid, arresting prose and on the basis of unprecedented research--conducted in multiple languages and on several continents--begun years before most of us had ever heard of Osama bin Laden or Abu Ghraib. The author of a major study of Iranian torture, Rejali also tackles the controversial question of whether torture really works, answering the new apologists for torture point by point. A brave and disturbing book, this is the benchmark against which all future studies of modern torture will be measured.

Download or read book Confronting Torture written by Scott A. Anderson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-04-23 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Torture has lately become front page news, featured in popular movies and TV shows, and a topic of intense public debate. It grips our imagination, in part because torturing someone seems to be an unthinkable breach of humanity—theirs and ours. And yet, when confronted with horrendous events in war, or the prospect of catastrophic damage to one’s own country, many come to wonder whether we can really afford to abstain entirely from torture. Before trying to tackle this dilemma, though, we need to see torture as a multifaceted problem with a long history and numerous ethical and legal aspects. Confronting Torture offers a multidisciplinary investigation of this wrenching topic. Editors Scott A. Anderson and Martha C. Nussbaum bring together a diversity of scholars to grapple with many of torture’s complexities, including: How should we understand the impetus to use torture? Why does torture stand out as a particularly heinous means of war-fighting? Are there any sound justifications for the use of torture? How does torture affect the societies that employ it? And how can we develop ethical or political bulwarks to prevent its use? The essays here resist the temptation to oversimplify torture, drawing together work from scholars in psychology, history, sociology, law, and philosophy, deepening and broadening our grasp of the subject. Now, more than ever, torture is something we must think about; this important book offers a diversity of timely, constructive responses on this resurgent and controversial subject.

Download or read book The Torture Letters written by Laurence Ralph and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-01-15 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge this grim reality, but everyone knows it happens—and that the torturers are the police. Three to five new claims are submitted to the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission of Illinois each week. Four hundred cases are currently pending investigation. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander Jon Burge. As the more recent revelations from the Homan Square “black site” show, that brutal period is far from a historical anomaly. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. In The Torture Letters, Laurence Ralph chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad. Engaging with a long tradition of epistolary meditations on racism in the United States, from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Ralph offers in this book a collection of open letters written to protesters, victims, students, and others. Through these moving, questing, enraged letters, Ralph bears witness to police violence that began in Burge’s Area Two and follows the city’s networks of torture to the global War on Terror. From Vietnam to Geneva to Guantanamo Bay—Ralph’s story extends as far as the legacy of American imperialism. Combining insights from fourteen years of research on torture with testimonies of victims of police violence, retired officers, lawyers, and protesters, this is a powerful indictment of police violence and a fierce challenge to all Americans to demand an end to the systems that support it. With compassion and careful skill, Ralph uncovers the tangled connections among law enforcement, the political machine, and the courts in Chicago, amplifying the voices of torture victims who are still with us—and lending a voice to those long deceased.

Download or read book Exposing Torture written by Hal Marcovitz and published by Twenty-First Century Books. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Torture. According to Henry Shue, professor of politics and international relations at the University of Oxford in England, "No other practice except slavery is so universally condemned in law and human convention. Yet, unlike slavery...torture is widespread and growing." Why is torture so common? Is it an unavoidable component of human psychology? Exposing Torture tackles these complex questions, delving into the history of torture around the world, from the flayings, burnings, and other methods of torture in ancient societies to the humiliating forms of psychological and sexual torture of the twenty-first century. But is torture an effective means of controlling human behavior? Can it help root out information about terrorism and prevent loss of human life? Over the centuries, many people have supported the point of view that it can, while others vehemently disagree. In this book, readers will examine the ethical and moral dilemmas of torture, while learning more about the international efforts to ensure the humanitarian treatment of individuals in a variety of circumstances. Exposing Torture also delves into the system of international courts and tribunals that work to bring known torturers to trial. Readers will hear from victims of torture who not only survived but sought justice and founded organizations to help other victims. After reading this in-depth examination, readers will be able to make a persuasive argument to answer the question: Is torture ever acceptable?

Download or read book Unspeakable Acts Ordinary People written by John Conroy and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2001-09-25 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of torture (in the name of the state) in three democracies (Israel, Northern Ireland, and the United States) by John Conroy, a Chicago journalist with a strong following among readers who know his previous book (a war diary of life in Belfast).

Download or read book Understanding Torture written by John Parry and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2011-02-16 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "John Parry's Understanding Torture is an important contribution to our understanding of how torture fits within the practices and beliefs of the modern state. His juxtaposition of the often indeterminate nature of the law of torture with the very specific state practices of torture is both startling and revealing." ---Paul W. Kahn is Robert W. Winner Professor of Law and the Humanities at Yale Law School and author of Sacred Violence "Parry is effective in building, deploying, and supporting his argument . . . that the law does not provide effective protections against torture, but also that the law is in itself constitutive of a political order in which torture is employed to create---and to destroy or re-create---political identities.” ---Margaret Satterthwaite, Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and Associate Professor of Clinical Law, NYU School of Law "A beautifully crafted, convincingly argued book that does not shy away from addressing the legal and ethical complexities of torture in the modern world. In a field that all too often produces simple or superficial responses to what has become an increasingly challenging issue, Understanding Torture stands out as a sophisticated and intellectually responsible work." ---Ruth Miller, Associate Professor of History, University of Massachusetts, Boston Prohibiting torture will not end it. In Understanding Torture, John T. Parry explains that torture is already a normal part of the state coercive apparatus. Torture is about dominating the victim for a variety of purposes, including public order; control of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities; and--- critically---domination for the sake of domination. Seen in this way, Abu Ghraib sits on a continuum with contemporary police violence in U.S. cities; violent repression of racial minorities throughout U.S. history; and the exercise of power in a variety of political, social, and interpersonal contacts. Creating a separate category for an intentionally narrow set of practices labeled and banned as torture, Parry argues, serves to normalize and legitimate the remaining practices that are "not torture." Consequently, we must question the hope that law can play an important role in regulating state violence. No one who reads this book can fail to understand the centrality of torture in modern law, politics, and governance. John T. Parry is Professor of Law at Lewis & Clark Law School.

Download or read book Caring for Victims of Torture written by James M. Jaranson and published by American Psychiatric Pub. This book was released on 1998 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its beginnings in the 1970s, the field of torture rehabilitation has grown rapidly. A growing awareness about the practice of torture (more than 100 countries today practice government-sanctioned torture) and its effects on victims is leading to an increasing number of dedicated treatment centers. The health care professionals on the staffs of these centers need the best, most up-to-date information and advice they can get. This book delivers it. Caring for Victims of Torture contains all the collective wisdom of some of the most respected international experts in the treatment of victims of government torture -- all distinguished physicians -- including pioneers in the field of traumatic stress. Contributors discuss the most recent advances in knowledge about government-sanctioned torture and offer practical approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of torture victims. Organized into six main sections, this annotated volume provides an overview of the history and politics of torture and rehabilitation; guidance in identifying and defining the sequelae of torture; a framework for assessment and treatment; specific treatment interventions; and a discussion of ethical implications. In the final section, physicians working in the field offer firsthand accounts and address how they are trying to balance politics with caregiving. Focusing on the physician's role, this book is chiefly a clinical guide. But for advanced-level students, it serves as a thorough, up-to-date text and reference work. Religious leaders, lawyers, politicians, human rights advocates, and torture victims themselves will find it a valuable resource as well.

Download or read book Torture and Its Definition In International Law written by Professor Metin Basoğlu and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an interdisciplinary approach to definition of torture by bringing together behavioral science and international law perspectives on torture. It is a collaborative effort by a group of prominent scholars of behavioral sciences, international law, human rights, and public health with internationally recognized expertise and authority in their field. It represents a first ever attempt to explore the scientific basis of legal understanding of torture and inform international law on various definitional issues by proposing a sound theory- and empirical-evidence-based psychological formulation of torture. Drawing on scientific evidence from the editor's 30 years of systematic research on torture, it proposes a learning theory formulation of torture based on the concept of helplessness under the control of others and offers an assessment methodology that can reduce the element of subjectivity in legal judgments in individual cases. It also demonstrates how this formulation can help understand the nature and severity of ill-treatments in different contexts, such as domestic violence and adverse conditions of penal confinement. Through a learning theory analysis of "enhanced interrogation techniques," it demonstrates not only why these techniques constitute torture but also how they help us understand the contextual defining characteristic of torture in general. The proposed formulation implies a broader concept of torture than previously understood, provides scientific and moral justification for the evolving trends in international law towards a broader coverage of ill-treatments in contexts beyond official custody and points to new directions of expansion of the concept. With a focus on the concepts of shame and humiliation and their evolutionary origin, the book explains why inhuman or degrading treatments can cause as much pain or suffering as physical torture. Although treatment issues are not covered, the book sheds light on potentially effective treatment approaches by offering important insights into psychology of torture.