Download or read book Torture and Its Definition in International Law written by Metin Baolu and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an interdisciplinary approach to definition of torture by a group of prominent scholars of behavioral sciences, international law, human rights, and public health. It represents a first ever attempt to compare behavioral science and international law perspectives on definitional issues and promote a sound theory- and evidence-based understanding of torture.

Download or read book A Glimpse of Hell written by Duncan Forrest and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1996-07-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over two decades, Amnesty International has been at the forefront of the international campaign against torture. For the first time, Amnesty International has commissioned the foremost experts in the field to write about the history of torture, the methods used, the torturers themselves, and their victims. A Glimpse of Hell is the result. Throughout recorded history, humans have deliberately subjected others to physical pain and mental anguish, sometimes in spite of laws prohibiting such behavior, sometimes with the full backing of the legal system. Early chapters offer a historical overview of torture and its popular and legal meanings, and examine its relationship with the law. Other contributions address specific methods used by torturers, their effects, and approaches for treating torture survivors. The terror of torture is not confined to the individual victim. Several essays discuss its consequences for other citizens, specifically for women, children, and the family. They also provide resources for documenting and combatting torture when it happens. The volume concludes with a political strategy concerning what can be done to put a stop to torture worldwide. Published to coincide with Amnesty International's most ambitious campaign against torture for over a decade, A Glimpse of Hell serves as a broad and authoritative source of information on torture throughout the world, all in one accessible and chilling volume.

Download or read book A Glimpse of Hell written by Duncan Forrest and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 1996 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over two decades, Amnesty International has been at the forefront of the international campaign against torture. For the first time, Amnesty International has commissioned the foremost experts in the field to write about the history of torture, the methods used, the torturers themselves, and their victims. "A Glimpse of Hell" is the result. Throughout recorded history, humans have deliberately subjected others to physical pain and mental anguish, sometimes in spite of laws prohibiting such behavior, sometimes with the full backing of the legal system. Early chapters offer a historical overview of torture and its popular and legal meanings, and examine its relationship with the law. Other contributions address specific methods used by torturers, their effects, and approaches for treating torture survivors. The terror of torture is not confined to the individual victim. Several essays discuss its consequences for other citizens, specifically for women, children, and the family. They also provide resources for documenting and combatting torture when it happens. The volume concludes with a political strategy concerning what can be done to put a stop to torture worldwide. Published to coincide with Amnesty International's most ambitious campaign against torture for over a decade, "A Glimpse of Hell" serves as a broad and authoritative source of information on torture throughout the world, all in one accessible and chilling volume.

Download or read book Hearings written by United States. Congress Senate and published by . This book was released on 1959 with total page 2588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Reproductive Freedom Torture and International Human Rights written by Ronli Sifris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-13 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contributes to a feminist understanding of international human rights by examining restrictions on reproductive freedom through the lens of the right to be free from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Ronli Sifris challenges the view that torture only takes place within the traditional paradigm of interrogation, punishment or intimidation of a detainee, arguing that this traditional construction of the concept of torture prioritises the experiences of men over the experiences of women given that the pain and suffering from which women disproportionately suffer frequently occurs outside of this context. She does this by conceptualising restrictions on women’s reproductive freedom within the framework of the right to be free from torture. The book considers the gendered nature of international law and the gender dimensions of the right to be free from torture. It examines the extension of the prohibition of torture to encompass situations beyond the traditional detainee context in recent years to encompass situations such as rape and female genital mutilation. It goes on to explore in detail whether denying access to abortion and involuntary sterilization constitutes torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment under international law. The book looks at whether limitations on reproductive freedom meet the determining criteria of torture which are: severe pain or suffering; being intentionally inflicted; being based on discrimination; linked in some way to a State official; whether they constitute lawful sanctions; and the importance of the concept of powerlessness. In doing so the book also highlights how this right may be applicable to other gender-based abuses including female genital mutilation, and how this right may be universally applied to allow women worldwide the right to reproductive freedom.

Download or read book Does Torture Prevention Work written by Richard Carver and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past three decades, international and regional human rights bodies have developed an ever-lengthening list of measures that states are required to adopt in order to prevent torture. But do any of these mechanisms actually work? This study is the first systematic analysis of the effectiveness of torture prevention. Primary research was conducted in 16 countries, looking at their experience of torture and prevention mechanisms over a 30-year period. Data was analysed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques. Prevention measures do work, although some are much more effective than others. Most important of all are the safeguards that should be applied in the first hours and days after a person is taken into custody. Notification of family and access to an independent lawyer and doctor have a significant impact in reducing torture. The investigation and prosecution of torturers and the creation of independent monitoring bodies are also important in reducing torture. An important caveat to the conclusion that prevention works is that is actual practice in police stations and detention centres that matters - not treaties ratified or laws on the statute book.

Download or read book Torture Worldwide written by Amnesty International and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In police stations and prison cells, on city streets and in remote villages, torturers continue to devastate the lives of countless victims. For some the result is an agonizing death. For survivors life can never be the same again. Some scars heal. Others continue to disfigure the mind and body long after the torture has ended. This report draws on recent reports of torture and ill-treatment from more than 150 countries. The victims are criminal suspects as well as political prisoners, the disadvantaged as well as the dissident, people targeted because of their identity as well as their beliefs. They are women as well as men, children as well as adults. Action to eradicate torture is needed urgently and this report launches a worldwide Amnesty International campaign against torture. Drawing on decades of experience in researching and working against torture, Torture Worldwide: An Affront to Human Dignity focuses on three major areas - preventing torture, confronting discrimination and overcoming impunity.

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 Torture written by Sanford Levinson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-10-28 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Torture is perhaps the most unequivocally banned practice in the world today. Yet recent photographs from Abu Ghraib substantiated claims that the United States and some of its allies are using methods of questioning relating to the war on terrorism that could be described as torture or, at the very least, as inhuman and degrading. In terror's wake, the use of such methods, at least under some conditions, has gained some prominent defenders, notably from within the White House. In this revised edition, Torture: A Collection brings together leading lawyers, political theorists, social scientists, and public intellectuals to debate the advisability of maintaining the absolute ban and to reflect on what it says about our societies if we do--or do not--adhere to it in all circumstances. New to this edition are essays by Charles Krauthammer and Andrew Sullivan on the adoption in 2005 of the McCain Amendment, which explicitly bars the use of torture and other cruel methods of interrogation.

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 The United Nations Convention Against Torture and its Optional Protocol written by Manfred Nowak and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-19 with total page 1376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prohibition of torture - the right to physical and mental integrity - is guaranteed in the strongest terms under international law. It is protected as an absolute right, non-derogable even in times of war or public emergency under many human rights treaties and is also generally accepted as a part of customary international law and even ius cogens. The main instrument to combat torture within the framework of the United Nations is the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). This Commentary explores the problematic definition of torture in the Convention, the substantive obligations of States parties, the principle of 'non-refoulement', provisions for international monitoring, and also the concept of preventative visits to all places of detention as contained in the Optional Protocol to the CAT. It also covers issues including the distinction between torture and cruel inhuman or degrading treatment and the principle of non-admissibility of evidence extracted under torture. Full article by article commentary on the Convention also provides historical context and thorough analysis of case-law and practice from international and regional courts and monitoring bodies. Relevant case-law from domestic courts are also discussed. Despite the broad ratification and the universal recognition of the prohibition of torture and other forms of ill-treatment we witness a 'global crisis' affecting the majority of countries worldwide. In recent years the protection of human rights is experiencing a particularly serious crisis - also affecting the phenomenon of torture - in which official narratives and public belief often trivialise and even endorse such practices in the name of security and the fight against terrorism, ignoring the suffering and damages it causes. On the other hand, the positive experiences in some States illustrate that torture can be eradicated if the provisions of CAT and OPCAT are taken seriously and are being fully implemented. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC 4.0 International licence. It is offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Download or read book The Prevention of Torture written by Danielle Celermajer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-06 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is an urgent need to analyze and assess how we prevent torture, against the background of a rigorous analysis of the factors that condition and sustain it. Drawing on rich empirical material from Sri Lanka and Nepal, The Prevention of Torture: An Ecological Approach interrogates the worlds that produce torture in order to propose how to bring about systemic institutional and cultural change. Critics have decried human rights approaches' failure to attend to structural factors, but this book seeks to go beyond a 'stance of criticism' to take up the positive project of reimagining human rights theory and practice. It discusses key debates in human rights and political theory, as well as the challenges that advocates face in translating situational analyses into real world interventions. Danielle Celermajer develops a new, ecological framework for mapping the worlds that produce torture, and thereby develops prevention strategies.

Download or read book Torture Humiliate Kill written by Hikmet Karcic and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2022-03-25 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Half a century after the Holocaust, on European soil, Bosnian Serbs orchestrated a system of concentration camps where they subjected their Bosniak Muslim and Bosnian Croat neighbors to torture, abuse, and killing. Foreign journalists exposed the horrors of the camps in the summer of 1992, sparking worldwide outrage. This exposure, however, did not stop the mass atrocities. Hikmet Karčić shows that the use of camps and detention facilities has been a ubiquitous practice in countless wars and genocides in order to achieve the wartime objectives of perpetrators. Although camps have been used for different strategic purposes, their essential functions are always the same: to inflict torture and lasting trauma on the victims. Torture, Humiliate, Kill develops the author’s collective traumatization theory, which contends that the concentration camps set up by the Bosnian Serb authorities had the primary purpose of inflicting collective trauma on the non-Serb population of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This collective traumatization consisted of excessive use of torture, sexual abuse, humiliation, and killing. The physical and psychological suffering imposed by these methods were seen as a quick and efficient means to establish the Serb “living space.” Karčić argues that this trauma was deliberately intended to deter non-Serbs from ever returning to their pre-war homes. The book centers on multiple examples of experiences at concentration camps in four towns operated by Bosnian Serbs during the war: Prijedor, Bijeljina, Višegrad, and Bileća. Chosen according to their political and geographical position, Karčić demonstrates that these camps were used as tools for the ethno-religious genocidal campaign against non-Serbs. Torture, Humiliate, Kill is a thorough and definitive resource for understanding the function and operation of camps during the Bosnian genocide.

Download or read book Psychological Torture written by Pau Perez Sales and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-03 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sadly, it is highly likely that psychological torture is committed by governments worldwide and yet, notwithstanding the serious moral questions that this disturbing and elusive concept raises, and research in the area so limited, there is no operational or legal definition. This pioneering new book provides the first scientific definition and instrument to measure what it means to be tortured psychologically, as well as how allegations of psychological torture can be judged. Ground in cross-disciplinary research across psychology, anthropology, ethics, philosophy, law and medicine, the book is a tour de force which analyses the legal framework in which psychological torture can exist, the harrowing effects it can have on those who have experienced it, and the motivations and identities of those who perpetrate it. Integrating the voices both of those who have experienced torture as well as those who have committed it, the book defines what we mean by psychological torture, its aims and effects, as well as the moral and ethical debates in which it operates. Finally, the book builds on the Istanbul Protocol to provide a comprehensive new framework, including practical scales, that enables us to accurately measure psychological torture for the first time. This is an important and much-needed overview and analysis of an issue that many governments have sought to sweep under the carpet. Its accessibility and range of coverage make it essential reading not only for psychologists and psychiatrists interested in this field, but also human rights organizations, lawyers and the wider international community.

Download or read book Victims of Torture written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on International Relations. Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Transformation of the Prohibition of Torture in International Law written by Lutz Oette and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment or punishment has a special status. It is the foremost international human rights norm protecting persons from attacks on their dignity and integrity. Consequently, it has been at the forefront of a series of developments in international human rights law and international law more broadly. Having withstood sustained challenges to its absolute nature in the 'war on terror', it has broadened its scope of application, becoming more sophisticated and complex in the process. The prohibition of torture increasingly interacts with other fields of human rights law, such as non-discrimination law, international criminal law, international humanitarian law, and international migration law. The Transformation of the Prohibition of Torture in International Law analyses the nature and significance of this transformation and looks into the scope of the prohibition's further evolution. Empirical scholarship, innovative human rights body practice, and challenges from activists, particularly from the Global South, have focused on the relational nature of torture and other ill-treatment, its embeddedness in wider structures of power, and the role of international law in legitimizing-if not facilitating-widespread suffering, from mass incarceration to poverty and climate change. This analysis reveals an inherent tension in the prohibition between a conventional, narrow focus on direct State violence and a wide lens encompassing myriad forms of suffering. To retain its validity and effectiveness in the twenty-first century, argues Lutz Oette, the prohibition on torture must navigate this tension and successfully address and transform abusive power asymmetries.

Download or read book Chile Evidence of Torture written by Amnesty International and published by Nicholson. This book was released on 1983 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: