Showing papers on "Torture published in 2000"

Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism

Abstract: vant interpretive principles like the principle of non-retrogression. What is the relationship between the Vienna Convention and human rights, humanitarian, and refugee treaties? Is nonretrogression a free-standing principle of treaty interpretation? As the case of Suresh v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) illustrates, such questions are more than academic. The Federal Court of Appeal in this case used the 1951 Refugee Convention to undercut the absolute right to be free of torture as recognized in the Torture Convention. The above points are not meant to detract from any particular paper or from the collection as a whole. Rather, they underscore the complexity and timeliness of the convergence problem. Those concerned with the human rights of refugees and the internally displaced from dispossession to refuge to settlement or repatriation will find Human Rights and Forced Displacement a valuable book. Those interested in the more general question of the cross-fertilization of international regimes will also find it worthwhile. One hopes that this collection of essays will inspire scholars and advocates alike to dedicate more time and energy to the issues surrounding convergence, compatibility, and cross-fertilization of legal traditions.

War and mental health: a brief overview

Abstract: This is the third of four articles Series editor: Anthony B Zwi (Anthony.Zwi@lshtm.ac.uk) About 40 violent conflicts are currently active and nearly 1% of the people in the world are refugees or displaced persons. Over 80% of all refugees are in developing countries, although 4 million have claimed asylum in western Europe in the past decade. Many wars are being played out on the terrain of subsistence economies; most conflict involves regimes at war with sectors of their own society—generally the poor and particular ethnic groups, such as the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Atrocity—extrajudicial execution, torture, disappearances, and sexual violation—generates terror, which maximises control over whole populations, as does the intentional destruction of the fabric of social, economic, and cultural life. Community leaders, health workers and facilities, schools, academics, places of worship, and anyone who speaks out for human rights and justice are often targets. In many regions such war is a factor in the daily lives and decision making of a whole society. #### Summary points The reframing of normal distress as psychological disturbance is a serious distortion Personal recovery is grounded in social recovery Rights and social justice shape collective healing Researchers must attend to resilience factors and beware of extrapolating from clinic based samples There is no such thing as a universal response to highly stressful events. However, somatic presentations such as headaches, non-specific pains or discomfort in torso and limbs, dizziness, weakness, and fatigue are central to the subjective experience and communication of distress wrought by war and its upheavals worldwide. This does not mean that these people do not have psychological insights but that somatic complaints reflect traditional modes of help seeking and also their view of what is relevant to bring to a medical setting.1 Some researchers see somatic symptoms as physiological responses driven by …

International Human Rights Law and Practice in Latin America

Abstract: Human rights practices have improved significantly throughout Latin America during the 1990s, but different degrees of legalization are not the main explanation for these changes. We examine state compliance with three primary norms of international human rights law: the prohibition against torture, the prohibition against disappearance, and the right to democratic governance. Although these norms vary in their degree of obligation, precision, and delegation, states have improved their practices in all three issue-areas. The least amount of change has occurred in the most highly legalized issue-area—the prohibition against torture. We argue that a broad regional norm shift—a “norms cascade”—has led to increased regional and international consensus with respect to an interconnected bundle of human rights norms, including the three discussed in this article. These norms are reinforced by diverse legal and political enforcement mechanisms that help to implement and ensure compliance with them.

Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America 1780-1865

Abstract: Throughout this important volume, the author underscores two vital themes: one, that visual presentation of slavery in England and America has been utterly dishonest to its subject, and the other a meditation on whether the ruptures of the slave experience - middle passage, bondage, and torture -- can be adequately represented and remembered.

Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower

Abstract: * Introduction * OURS AND THEIRS: WASHINGTON'S LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH TERRORISTS AND HUMAN-RIGHTS VIOLATORS * 1. Why do terrorists keep picking on the United States? * 2. America's gift to the world - the Afghan terrorist alumni * 3. Assassinations * 4. Excerpts from US Army and CIA Training Manuals * 5. Torture * 6. The unsavories * 7. Training new unsavories * 8. War criminals: theirs and ours * 9. Haven for terrorists * 10. Supporting Pol Pot * UNITED STATES USE OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION * 11. Bombings * 12. Depleted uranium * 13. Cluster bombs * 14. Chemical and biological weapons abroad * 15. Chemical and biological weapons at home * 16. Encouraging the use of CBW by other nations * A ROGUE STATE VERSUS THE WORLD * 17. A concise history of US global interventions * 18. Perverting elections * 19. Trojan horse: the national endowment for democracy * 20. The US versus the world at the United Nations * 21. Eavesdropping on the planet * 22. Kidnapping and looting * 23. How the CIA sent Nelson Mandela to prison for 28 years * 24. The CIA and drugs: just say 'Why not?' * 25. Being the world's only superpower means never having to say you're sorry * 26. The US invades, bombs and kills for it...but do Americans really believe in free enterprise? * 27. A day in the life of a free country...or...how do the United States get away with it? * Notes * Index * About the author

Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison

Abstract: The horrific torture and execution of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge during the 1970s is one of the century's major human disasters. David Chandler, a world-renowned historian of Cambodia, examines the Khmer Rouge phenomenon by focusing on one of its key institutions, the secret prison outside Phnom Penh known by the code name 'S-21'. The facility was an interrogation center where more than 14,000 'enemies' were questioned, tortured, and made to confess to counterrevolutionary crimes. Fewer than a dozen prisoners left S-21 alive. During the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) era, the existence of S-21 was known only to those inside it and a few high-ranking Khmer Rouge officials. When invading Vietnamese troops discovered the prison in 1979, murdered bodies lay strewn about and instruments of torture were still in place. An extensive archive containing photographs of victims, cadre notebooks, and "DK" publications was also found. Chandler utilizes evidence from the S-21 archive as well as materials that have surfaced elsewhere in Phnom Penh. He also interviews survivors of S-21 and former workers from the prison. Documenting the violence and terror that took place within S-21 is only part of Chandler's story. Equally important is his attempt to understand what happened there in terms that might be useful to survivors, historians, and the rest of us. Chandler discusses the 'culture of obedience' and its attendant dehumanization, citing parallels between the Khmer Rouge executions and the Moscow Show Trails of the 1930s, Nazi genocide, Indonesian massacres in 1965-66, the Argentine military's use of torture in the 1970s, and the recent mass killings in Bosnia and Rwanda. In each of these instances, Chandler shows how turning victims into 'others' in a manner that was systematically devaluing and racialist made it easier to mistreat and kill them. More than a chronicle of Khmer Rouge barbarism, "Voices from S-21" is also a judicious examination of the psychological dimensions of state-sponsored terrorism that conditions human beings to commit acts of unspeakable brutality.

State Crime, Human Rights, and the Limits of Criminology

Abstract: THE AIM OF THIS ARTICLE IS TO SUGGEST HOW CRIMINOLOGY CAN REMEDY ITS neglect of the important phenomenon of state crime, without adopting such a broad definition of "crime" as to destroy what coherence criminology has as a distinct field of study. To assess the universality of our approach we employ examples from two different state traditions, Anglo-American and Turkish. Our definition allows us to examine countries as diverse as Turkey and the United Kingdom from the perspective of a continuum, rather than as two discrete, incomparable state formations -- authoritarian and democratic. One of our reasons for selecting Turkey as a comparative example is that it is a democratizing state with an authoritarian historical backdrop. Torture of detainees, extrajudicial killings and disappearances, violent public order policing, forced evacuations, the razing of whole villages, and the routine harassment of trade unionists, media workers, and human rights defenders form the human rights landscape in much of Turkey (see Amnesty International, 1998; European Commission, 1998; Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, 1997, 1998; Human Rights Watch, 1999). Torture is, however, in breach of Article 17 of the Constitution and Articles 243 and 245 of the penal code, and is punishable by up to five years of imprisonment. Proposals documented in the new draft penal code are set to increase the powers of the courts in punishing state officials found guilty of torture and ill treatment of detainees. In some celebrated cases, state officials have been charged with criminal conduct, but they are few and the crimes a re many. In 1999, six police officers were sentenced to five and one-half years each for torturing a suspect to death in 1993, but most other cases against state officials have resulted in very lenient sentences, fines, or acquittals. The violence of the Turkish state is of a different order of magnitude to that employed in most liberal democracies. Yet instances of violent crime by British and American state officials are not difficult to find -- recent revelations about the Los Angeles Police Department, and allegations of brutality against officers at the Wormwood Scrubs and Wandsworth prisons in England are among the more obvious examples. Less well-publicized is the extent to which legally unjustifiable violence is routinely used by police to enforce social discipline in some working-class areas (Choongh, 1997; Waddington, 1999). Despite the arguments of some theorists (e.g., Giddens, 1985) to the contrary, the use and threat of physical violence remain central to state power in liberal democracies. Cover's remarks on American criminal trials bring this out vividly: If convicted the defendant customarily walks -escorted--to prolonged confinement, usually without significant disturbance to the civil appearance of the event. It is, of course, grotesque to assume that the civil facade is voluntary." ...There are societies in which contrition and shame control defendants' behaviour to a greater extent than does violence.... But I think it is unquestionably the case in the United States that most prisoners walk into prison because they know they will be dragged or beaten into prison if they do not walk (Cover, 1986: 1, 607). The legal limits of legitimate force are inherently vague -- it is impossible to define in advance exactly what form of dragging or beating the prisoner may legitimately receive -- and strict enforcement of what limits do exist is intrinsically difficult and will often be contrary to the interests of the enforcing agency. It would therefore be surprising to discover any state in which criminal or legally ambiguous acts of violence by state agents did not occur. It would be equally astounding if any state were able to eliminate the innumerable opportunities for predatory crime inherent in economic regulation and revenue-raising (Smart, 1999). Some states, however, plainly commit far more and more serious crimes than others do, and it might be expected that these differences would be among the central concerns of criminology (Comfort, 1950). …

V. Truth Commissions, Transitional Justice, and Civil Society

Abstract: Many societies seeking a just transition from authoritarian regimes or civil wars to democracy have employed official truth commissions to investigate systematic violations of internationally recognized human rights by a previous government, by its opponents, or by combatants in an internal armed conflict. Currently being utilized in South Africa and Guatemala, such investigative bodies have been employed in at least 20 countries and are being considered for such nations as Bosnia and Kenya. The human rights violations that truth commissions investigate include extra judicial killing disappearance, rape, torture, and severe ill treatment. The question of 'transitional justice', as I shall be employing the term, is 'How should a fledgling democracy reckon with severe human rights abuses that earlier authoritarian regimes, their opponents, or combatants in an internal armed conflict have committed'? The challenge for new democracy is to respond appropriately to past evils without undermining the new democracy or jeopardizing prospects for future development. Societies in transition to democracy have employed many interrelated means in reckoning with human rights abuses that a prior regime or its opponents have committed. In addition to investigator bodies, these measures range from 'forgive, forget and move on' to national or international war crime tribunals. They also embrace such tools as social shaming and banning of perpetrators from public office ('lustration'); public access to police records; public apology or memorials to victims; reburial or reparation of victims; literary and historical writing; and amnesty or impunity (the ignoring or accepting of past violations). In this paper I argue, first, that truth commissions can contribute to achieving many important goals in societies in transition to democracy. But they must be supplemented by, and work in tandem with, other measures and institutions. I compare the strengths and weaknesses of investigator bodies and other tools for meeting the challenge of transitional justice, and I delineate eight goals by truth commissions should be fashioned, combined, and sequenced with other tools. Second, I seek to show that a nation's civil society) - especially when it practices public deliberation or deliberative democracy - is often indispensable to the success of truth commissions and to reckoning with past wrongs more generally. Finally, I support the contention that international civil society may play a useful role in advancing the goals of national truth commissions and transitional justice.

Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture

Abstract: "Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People" is a riveting book that exposes the potential in each of us for acting unspeakably. John Conroy sits down with torturers from several nations and comes to understand their motivations. His compelling narrative has the tension of a novel. He takes us into a Chicago police station, two villages in the West Bank, and a secret British interrogation center in Northern Ireland, and in the process we are exposed to the experience of the victim, the rationalizations of the torturer, and the seeming indifference of the bystander. The torture occurs in democracies that ostensibly value justice, due process, and human rights, and yet the perpetrators and their superiors escape without punishment, revealing much about the dynamics of torture.

Survivors of torture in a general medical setting: how often have patients been tortured, and how often is it missed?

Abstract: v Objectives To measure the frequency of people reporting torture among patients in a medical outpatient clinic and to determine primary care physicians' awareness of their patients' exposure to torture. v Design Cross-sectional survey followed by selected in-depth interviews of participants report- ing a history of torture. Medical record review and interview of torture survivors' primary care physicians. v Setting The internal medicine clinic of a large, urban medical center. v Participants A convenience sample of 121 adult patients who were not born in the United States and who were attending the adult ambulatory care clinic. v Interventions All participants were interviewed using the Detection of Torture Survivors Survey, a validated instrument that asks about exposure to torture according to the World Medical Association definition of torture. Participants who reported a history of torture were interviewed in depth to confirm that they had been tortured. We reviewed the medical records of participants who reported a history of torture and interviewed their primary care physicians. v Main outcome measures Self-reported history of torture. The awareness of primary care physicians of this history. v Results Eight of 121 participants (6.6% (95% confi- dence interval: 3.1%-13.1%)) reported a history of torture. None of the survivors of torture had been identified as such by their primary care physician. v Conclusions Physicians of patients who have not been born in the United States and who attend urban general medical clinics frequently are unaware that their patients are survivors of torture. Primary care physicians can be the locus of intervention in the care of torture survivors. The first step is for physicians to recognize the possibility of torture survivors among their patients.

International Human Rights Lexicon

Abstract: Arms Children Culture Death Penalty Democracy Detention Development Disability Disappearance Education Fair Trial Food Globalization Health Housing International Crimes Media Privacy Protest Racism Religion Sexuality Terrorism Torture Universality Victims Women Work

Psychological disorders in survivors of torture: exhaustion, impairment and depression.

Abstract: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been described as the characteristic sequel to extreme events in life such as war and especially torture. This limitation to a single approach in regard to di

Violence, democracy, and education : an analytical framework

Abstract: To understand fully the role of violence and the related extent of harm inflicted upon various population groups or individuals in a democratic society, or in any society for that matter, two things are required. One needs first to conduct a systematic analysis of the different forms of violence existing in that society. Second, on that basis, one must try to establish the patterns and relationships linking these manifestations of violence to the prevailing economic, social, and political power structures, in order to establish accountability. The framework outlined in this report is offered as a tool to facilitate a third type of analysis. This report was guided by the assumption that violence is a multi-faceted phenomenon associated with specific causes and responsible people or institutions. The report also reflects a strong belief in the existence of universal human rights and the premise that the different forms of violence mentioned in the article are sources of harm or suffering regardless of the type of society and culture one lives in and no matter one's own individual characteristics. Whether Chinese or Swiss, Muslim or Jew, man or woman, situations like torture , hunger, illiteracy, lack of political freedom, living in fear, and lack of self-determination are hurtful. Education's place in the study of human rights violations is particularly important because of its potential role as either a negative or positive factor with strong multiplier effects in each case.

The discourse on trauma in non-Western cultural contexts: Contributions of an ethnographic method.

Abstract: A counsellor working in a clinic for torture victims in Sri Lanka speaks of cultural collapse, confusion, and trauma. This interpretation is one among the many ways in which people speak about trauma, the many ways in which the word trauma has taken up a meaning in diverse cultural contexts. What is mentioned first is the experience of cultural collapse, of cultural destabilization. This is a common experience for the large number of people living in war-torn societies, refugee camps, or as political refugees in host countries.

Coming to terms : South Africa's search for truth

Abstract: "Coming to Terms" is a groundbreaking consideration of a country's attempts to put a troubled history behind it and reach a new stage of development Martin Meredith takes an unprecedented look into the key cases presented to the commission - both those involving well-known figures such as Stephen Biko and Winnie Mandela, and those that deal with the routine violence and torture that shaped the lives of average South Africans In vivid narrative and dramatic testimony he brings to life many stories of individuals - heroes, villains, and those who fell uneasily into the grey area in between - as well as the larger story of a country attempting to move beyond a legacy of violence Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tina Rosenberg then takes a more global look at how nations must deal with a repressive past, drawing on her own conversations with victims and victimizers in more than a decade of reporting from Latin America, Eastern Europe, South Africa and Bosnia She evaluates the strategies different countries have tried in the name of truth and justice, and looks at controversial international developments that open exciting new possibilities for countries wishing to hold past dictators accountable for their crimes The only book to offer a complete and even-handed account of the work and the moral issues raised by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, "Coming to Terms" is useful reading for anyone interested in South Africa, human rights, or the evolution of democracy

Legacies of Authoritarianism: Brazilian Torturers' and Murderers' Reformulation of Memory

Abstract: In countries undergoing redemocratization, as throughout Latin America, where torture and murder were systematic government practices, remembering and forgetting have a political as well as a personal dimension. How an authoritarian past is reconstructed by those who experienced it can influence whether past torturers and murderers receive blanket amnesty or submit to a trial with possible civil and criminal punishment or the scrutiny of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission or some other public acknowledgment of their acts. Each course of action shapes personal and political healing among participants in a particular way. Amnesty for those in violent security forces may demoralize their victims while providing a "political bargain" that promotes overall political stabilization, at least for a while. Political trials may foster victims' healing but undermine the perpetrators' political transformation and public acknowledgment of their wrongdoing: seeing trials as threatening, perpetrators may reject self-criticism and go more deeply underground to avoid their and their families' becoming "victims." This outcome may have an impact on social memory by keeping information about the character of repressive regimes from becoming public history. This in turn may hinder political transformation, since, as Walter Benjamin (1968) has argued, what becomes collective memory can promote or inhibit collective resistance to oppression and political transformation toward democracy. How does a country remember its violent past? This study attempts to reconstruct Brazilian historical memory of the military regime's security forces through interviews with police about the torture and murder they

Secret dialogues : church-state relations, torture, and social justice in authoritarian Brazil

Abstract: "Secret Dialogues" uncovers an unexpected development in modern Latin American history: the existence of secret talks between generals and Roman Catholic bishops at the height of Brazil's military dictatorship. New archival sources demonstrate that the church sought to retain its privileges and influence by exploring a potential alliance with the military. From 1970 to 1974 the secret Bipartite Commission worked to resolve church-state conflict and to define the boundary between social activism and subversion. As the bishops increasingly made defence of human rights their top pastoral and political goal, the Bipartite became an important forum of protest against torture and social injustice. Based on more than 60 interviews and primary sources from three continents, "Secret Dialogues" is a major addition to the historical narrative of the most violent yet, ironically, the least studied period of the Brazilian military regime. Its story is intertwined with the central themes of the era: revolutionary warfare, repression, censorship, the fight for democracy and the conflict between Catholic notions of social justice and the anticommunist Doctrine of National Security. "Secret Dialogues" is the first book of its kind on the contemporary Catholic Church in any Latin American country. It is written for undergraduate and graduate students, professional scholars and the general reader interested in Brazil, Latin America, military dictatorship, human rights, and the relationship between religion and politics.

‘Ways of death: accounts of terror from Angolan refugees in Namibia’

Abstract: There was a person in Kuito [Kuanavale] called Vindindo. When he captures somebody, he cuts him/her up with an axe and drinks the blood. Like when they came and seized Nyavihoma [the mother of Vihoma], he killed her and drank the blood. Then he spat it out towards the sun: phaa! Those who lived in the bush told us about Vindindo. He chopped up people. He also died there in the bush. He was the one who killed the wife of Sakahiata [the father of Kahiata]. And they also called him Salingimbu [the father of the axe].(1) During fieldwork carried out in 1996 and 1997 among Angolan refugees in Kaisosi and Kehemu, two locations east of Rundu (Kavango Region, Namibia), many of the people interviewed related accounts in which torture and mutilation formed a major theme. As I had not dared to ask directly about these delicate, intimate and painful issues, I was struck by the informants' initiative and their insistence on relating the events. It soon became clear that it was particularly civilians who stressed these atrocities, while many adult men, who had been actively involved in the fighting, were more concerned with explaining the technological aspects of warfare. Predominantly a victims' discourse, these accounts can give us insight into the ways in which suffering and terror are processed, a field of research hitherto much neglected by scholars of Angolan history. METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES: TRUTH AND FEAR Explanation is an important part of the historian's craft. Yet, in the early 1940s, Marc Bloch had already made it clear that merely looking for motives does not do justice to the important questions of causality (1989: 183). It is telling that in this passage Bloch refers to the climate of war in which he was writing. During my fieldwork, Angolan refugees in Kaisosi and Kehemu likewise stressed that the violence and suffering which they had experienced in wartime could not be explained in terms of rational motives. Time and again informants pointed out the absurdity of the war and its consequences. Instead of trying to explain the purpose of violence in a functionalist manner, they gave many examples in which they emphasised the senseless and absurd character of what had happened. Not all of the Angolan war, however, was deemed to be absurd to the same degree. During the nationalist war before independence many horrible and meaningless things had happened, but at least the reason for the fighting had been clear: the Portuguese were to be ousted from the country. After independence `black people started fighting black people'.(2) In the refugees' accounts the latter phase of the war in particular was depicted as absurd and cruel: not only were the reasons for the fighting increasingly obscure, but the way the military treated civilians no longer made sense. The unprecedented scale on which killing, torture and mutilation took place was deemed to be beyond comprehension. The refugees' refusal to make sense of violence did not mean they were unwilling to tell about their experiences. There was, on the contrary, a strong wish to testify and to relate what had happened during the war. It was held that narrating the history of the refugees could help raise their marginal status and make their plight more widely understood in the Namibian context. Apart from this political argument, informants also underlined the importance of their accounts as a way of processing their experiences. Although they did not attempt to `make sense' of the violence, the refugees moulded their experiences into accounts in order to interpret what had happened. During these testimonies the narrator was included in the audience--consistent with Richard Werbner's comments on the fieldwork he conducted after the counter-insurgency war in Zimbabwe: But her questioning seemed to me to be addressed to herself at least as much as to others; it revealed an inner disquiet, an irresolvable doubt, and it conveyed the anxiety, perhaps the guilt, of a predicament she shared with other survivors of the catastrophe of Gukurahundi. …

From the Hawaii Declaration to the Declaration of Madrid.

Abstract: The Declaration of Hawaii, adopted by the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) in 1977, was a significant event. But the needs and new ethical dilemmas of the 1990s led WPA to develop new recommendations on the duties of psychiatrists resulting in the Declaration of Madrid, adopted by WPA in 1996. It outlines the framework of ethical conduct of psychiatrists, formulates seven general guidelines with an increased emphasis on research and resource allocation, and gives five specific guidelines on euthanasia, torture, the death penalty, selection of sex, and organ transplantation.

The Charade of US Ratification of International Human Rights Treaties

Abstract: It is sadly academic to ask whether international human rights law should trump US domestic law. That is because, on the few occasions when the US government has ratified a human rights treaty, it has done so in a way designed to preclude the treaty from having any domestic effect. Washington pretends to join the international human rights system, but it refuses to permit this system to improve the rights of US citizens. This approach reflects an attitude toward international human rights law of fear and arrogance-fear that international standards might constrain the unfettered latitude of the global superpower, and arrogance in the conviction that the United States, with its long and proud history of domestic rights protections, has nothing to learn on this subject from the rest of the world. As other governments increasingly see through this short-sighted view of international human rights law, it weakens America's voice as a principled defender of human rights around the world and diminishes America's moral influence and stature. The US government's approach to the ratification of international human rights treaties is unique. Once the government signs a treaty, the pact is sent to Justice Department lawyers who comb through it looking for any requirement that in their view might be more protective of US citizens' rights than pre-existing US law. In each case, a reservation, declaration, or understanding is drafted to negate the additional rights protection. These qualifications are then submitted to the Senate as part of the ratification package.1 For example, Article 6(5) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ("ICCPR") prohibits the imposition of the death penalty "for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age."2 To preserve the power to execute such juvenile offenders, the US government insisted on a reservation effectively negating this provision.3 In taking this extraordinary step, the United States ensured its place with the mere handful of governments worldwide that persist in the barbaric practice of executing offenders who were children when they committed their crimes-such paragons of human rights virtue as Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.4 Indeed, this US reservation was particularly egregious because it concerned a right-the right to life-from which the ICCPR precludes derogation.5 Similarly, the US government entered a reservation limiting the conduct prohibited by the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment ("Torture Convention"). The problem, from the government's perspective, was that Article 16 of the convention precludes not only "cruel and unusual punishments"-the prohibition contained in the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution-but also "degrading treatment." To avoid any possibility of this provision being interpreted to impose a higher official standard of conduct, the US government adopted a reservation stating that the Torture Convention prohibits no more than the "cruel and unusual punishment" provision of the US Constitution.6 After this exercise of stripping human rights treaties of any protections that might add to US law, the government takes out a sort of insurance policy against the possibility that the Justice Department lawyers might have made a mistake. To ensure that some new hidden right is not lurking in parts of the treaty for which no reservation, declaration or understanding was entered, the US government, first declares that the treaty is "not self-executing"7 meaning that it has no force of law without so-called implementing legislation. This step is not necessarily objectionable in itself, since it ensures that new rights are endorsed by both houses of Congress through the traditional legislative process, rather than through the unicameral ratification process, which requires the consent of only the Senate. But then, the government announces that implementing legislation is unnecessary because, according to the Justice Department lawyers, all the rights for which reservations, declarations or understandings were not registered are already protected by US law. …

Grundkurs Strafrecht : allgemeine Strafrechtslehre

Abstract: ["Basic Course in Criminal Law - General Criminal Law Teachings"] The textbook introduces all the principles and systematic connections of General Criminal Law Teaching. By presenting and debating current solutions to problems in jurisprudence and legal teaching, it offers the reader the opportunity to comprehend the evolution of assumed premises in General Criminal Law Teaching. The scope has been extended since the previous edition. This expansion was required on the one hand due to the adoption of new questions and on the other hand due to the emerging clarification, specification and modifications of known problem constellations that arose in the ongoing debate. The following are cited for example: The halting of proximate cause through independently executed self-danger and/or self-damage, a negligence offence, substantial and unsubstantial deviations from real versus imaginary causal effects, the "emergency assistance through torture", the "killing of house tyrannies", the liability of Guarantor's Obligation Arising from Preceding Action ("Ingerenzhaftung") from committing an offence through positive action, the punishment of an unsuitable attempt of a false offence of omission, the "professionally adequate" and "neutral" aid procedure and the competitors.

May government ever use torture? Two responses from German law

Abstract: May government ever use torture? When we consult our sense of right and wrong, our answer would and should be, "certainly not!" It would be unfortunate and a sad indication of our moral state of mind were we to respond otherwise. Would our minds change, though, if we were to envision government using torture not as a means to repress citizens, but for the legitimate purpose of protecting them against harmful individuals? Even then, most of us would probably still conclude that torture remains an illegitimate act. Even good ends do not justify all means. Despite these initial reactions, doubts begin to arise when we turn from the general description of bad persons threatening good citizens with evil acts to more detailed and probable scenarios. All of you remember the terrorist attack, a few years ago, on the World Trade Center in New York City. Some of you will have seen the movie, The Siege, in which a U.S. Army General uses force to get the names of members of a suspected terrorist group from an Arab-American.1 And, as some of you are aware, in 1996 the Israeli Supreme Court held that it was legal to extract information from detainees to prevent probable or imminent terrorist attacks.2 Instead of using

The Utilitarian Justification of Torture: Denial, Desert and Disinformation

Abstract: Torture is prohibited by customary international law. Yet the practice widely persists. Beneath the rhetoric of human rights talk the utilitarian justification of torture commands a good deal of support among police and security agencies and is detectable between the lines of the discourse of denial. Can torture be justified on utilitarian grounds? Close examination of Bentham's defence of torture, and the reasoning of the Landau Report in support of `moderate physical pressure' in Israel, suggests that it cannot. The practice of torture will arguably best be countered by confronting the subterranean utilitarian justifications of torture on their own terms: in the long term it does not work but, rather, undermines the legitimacy of the state itself.

Exile to Paradise: Savagery and Civilization in Paris and the South Pacific, 1790-1900

Abstract: Introduction 1. Introduction: teleology for modern France 2. Becoming savage? the first step toward civilisation and the practices of intransigence in New Caledonia 3. cleansing Paris of Le Peuple 4. The ideal subject for the third republic 5. Variations on a French western 6. Improper subjectivity: recuperating the category of affect in French colonial policy 7. Fatal nostalgia 8. Hybridity or humanitarianism? 9. The rigors of reconcilation: amnesty, torture, and political life Conclusion Appendix Notes Bibliography Index.

The Future of UN Human Rights Treaty Monitoring: UN human rights reporting procedures: An NGO perspective

Abstract: Introduction This chapter is written from the perspective of a large international non-governmental organisation (NGO): it seeks to share some of the experiences which Amnesty International has had with the UN treaty bodies. Amnesty International operates in several different contexts within the UN system. The organisation works with the political bodies (the Security Council, General Assembly and Commission on Human Rights), as well as with the various agencies, expert bodies, and field operations. The first thing that strikes one when considering the use made of the treaty bodies by NGOs is the ‘splendid isolation’ of the treaty bodies from the rest of the UN system. The treaty bodies are considered by some to be the heart of the human rights system, and the treaty bodies see themselves as the hub around which others should circle. The reality is that the treaty bodies are becoming more and more peripheral to the UN system and need to reach out to establish new links. In preparing this chapter the author spoke to two former UN officials who had headed UN human rights field operations. Neither ex-director could remember having had any contact or use for the treaty bodies. They considered the treaty bodies irrelevant for the ‘real’ human rights work which was being performed in the country. This chapter will highlight the need for new links to the treaty bodies and will put forward a series of suggestions for a more integrated approach to human rights monitoring in the UN system.

Grief Transformed: The Mothers of the Plaza De Mayo

Abstract: In Argentina during the years 1976–1983 the military assumed power, employing oppression, torture, death, and disappearance to intimidate the citizenry. A group of mothers, who met while searching ...