The Transformation of the Prohibition of Torture in International Law

The Transformation of the Prohibition of Torture in International Law

Author: Lutz Oette

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-07-04

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0198885776

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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.


The United Nations Convention Against Torture

The United Nations Convention Against Torture

Author: Manfred Nowak

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 1649

ISBN-13: 9780199280001

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This volume provides a thorough commentary on the articles of the Convention against Torture, with historical context and analysis of relevant case law from monitoring bodie and international, regional and domestic courts.


Interrogation and Torture

Interrogation and Torture

Author: Steven J. Barela

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 625

ISBN-13: 0190097523

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This book develops, for the first time, a comprehensive discussion regarding the legality of torture and the efficacy of interrogation. Scientific research has concluded that torture is not effective. So, what interrogational methods are effective and how does one deploy those methods in such a way that is consistent with law and morality?


The Optional Protocol to the UN Convention Against Torture

The Optional Protocol to the UN Convention Against Torture

Author: Rachel Murray

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2011-08-11

Total Pages: 1224

ISBN-13: 0191018449

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The Optional Protocol to the UN Convention Against Torture (OPCAT) establishes an independent international monitoring committee (SPT) which itself will visit states and places where persons are deprived of their liberty. It also requires states to set up independent national bodies to visit places of detention. This book, drawing upon events held and interviews with governments, civil society, members of UN treaty bodies, national visiting bodies and others, identifies key factors that have shaped the operation of these visiting bodies since OPCAT came into force in 2006. It looks in detail at the background to the adoption of the Protocol, as well as how the international committee, the SPT, has carried out its mandate in its first few years. It examines the range of places of detention that could be visited by these bodies, and the expectations placed on the national visiting bodies themselves. The book also places the OPCAT within the broader system of torture prevention in the UN and elsewhere and identifies a range of trends arising from the different geographical regions. As well as providing an insight into its work, this detailed examination of OPCAT also provides valuable lessons for other new human rights treaties such as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Convention on Enforced Disappearances, which have similar provisions concerning national mechanisms.


Does Torture Prevention Work?

Does Torture Prevention Work?

Author: Richard Carver

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2016-07-01

Total Pages: 502

ISBN-13: 1781388687

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The first systematic analysis of the effectiveness of torture prevention.


Human rights adjudication in Africa: Challenges and opportunities within the African Union and sub-regional human rights systems

Human rights adjudication in Africa: Challenges and opportunities within the African Union and sub-regional human rights systems

Author: Alejandro Fuentes

Publisher: Pretoria University Law Press

Published: 2024-02-26

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13:

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The collection of chapters contained in this book originates from the first Raoul Wallenberg Institute Regional Africa Academic Network Conference held at the University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe in October 2022. The main aim of this book is to advance an understanding of the way Africa regional and sub-regional human rights systems contribute to access to justice on the continent and to generate further knowledge about the institutions that make up the African human rights adjudication system, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and sub-regional courts, such as the Economic Community of West African States Community Court of Justice.


Mental Health Law

Mental Health Law

Author: Kay Wilson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-06-08

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0192654950

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The debate about whether mental health law should be abolished or reformed emerged during the negotiations of the Convention on the Right of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and has raged fiercely for over a decade. It has resulted in an impasse between abolitionists, States Parties, and other reformers and a literature which has devolved into 'camps'. Mental Health Law: Abolish or Reform? aims to break new ground by cutting through the confusion using the tools of human rights treaty interpretation backed by a deep jurisprudential analysis of core CRPD concepts - dignity (including autonomy), equality, and participation - to gain a clearer understanding of the meaning of the CRPD and what it requires States Parties to do. In doing so, it sets out the development of mental health law and is unique in tracing the history of the abolitionist movement and how nad why it has emerged now. By digging deeper into the conceptual basis of the CRPD and developing the 'interpretive compass' based on those three core CRPD concepts, the book aims to flesh out a broader vision of disability rights and move the debate forward by evaluating the three main abolition and reform options. Drawing on jurisprudential and multi-disciplinary research from philosophy, medicine, sociology, disability studies, and history, it argues compassionately and sensitively that mental health law should not be abolished, but should instead be significantly reformed to minimize coercion and maximize the support and choices given to persons with mental impairments to realize all of their CRPD rights.


Philosophy on the Border

Philosophy on the Border

Author: Robin May Schott

Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9788763505031

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This anthology is inspired by the conviction that the big questions of human existence, including matters of love and hate, responsibility and war, matter to us both as individuals and as citizens of a global order. Hence, these questions ought to matter to philosophers as well. In exploring these questions, the authors follow the ethical turn in philosophy, which transgresses the boundaries between philosophical thought and empirical existence, as well as between philosophy and other disciplines. The central themes of the anthology focus on the relation between self and other, between ambiguity and ambivalence, and between the problem of evil and responses to it. The authors discuss these themes in relation to concrete issues in the present, including colonialism, immigration and national policies towards refugees, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, genocide, and mass rape. The contributors to this anthology, who come from a variety of national backgrounds, work in the fields of philosophy, psychology, and Holocaust studies.


Peremptory Norms of General International Law (Jus Cogens) and the Prohibition of Terrorism

Peremptory Norms of General International Law (Jus Cogens) and the Prohibition of Terrorism

Author: Aniel Caro de Beer

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-02-19

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 9004391541

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Winner of the 2020 ASIL Lieber prize! In Peremptory Norms of International Law and Terrorism (Jus Cogens) and the Prohibition of Terrorism, Aniel de Beer analyses the role of these norms (jus cogens norms) in the fight against terrorism. Jus cogens norms protect fundamental values of the international community, are hierarchically superior and non-derogable. The author argues, based on an analysis of the sources of international law, that the prohibition of terrorism has become the jus cogens norm of our time. She further considers the impact of the status of the prohibition of terrorism as a jus cogens norm on other norms of international law relevant in the fight against terrorism, namely the prohibition of torture, the right to a fair trial and the prohibition of the inter-state use of force.