The International Commission of Jurists and Amnesty International were both instrumental in bringing that project to fruition. As recounted by Nigel Rodley, the government of Sweden was keen to take that work one step further, sponsoring a treaty that would have full status of international law. That concern led Amnesty to launch a Campaign Against Torture in 1972 and to lobby UN members to issue a declaration against torture. Their concern and outrage at its continuing practice, however, did help develop and expand the legal and policy framework about torture.Īmnesty International’s efforts to secure the release of “ prisoners of conscience” first alerted the organization to the prevalence of torture, frequently directed toward political prisoners. Human rights groups, thus, did not put torture on the human rights policy map, either conceptually or legally. Like slavery, fundamental freedoms, and many due process concerns, torture was readily identified as a human rights problem that belonged in the basic human rights standards developed after World War II. Torture is also listed as one of the crimes that constitute a “grave breach” of the 1949 Geneva Conventions on the treatment of victims of war. Torture is prohibited by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and by the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
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