Denial of right to freedom from cruel, inhumane or degrading punishment

Cruel punishment
Unusual punishment
Degrading punishment

Nature

Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights asserts: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". In particular, no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation. In spite of these and national laws with similar guarantees, men, women and children are tortured, imprisoned, murdered and humiliated at the whim of officials in the majority of nations across the world.

Background

The denial of the right to freedom from cruel, inhumane or degrading punishment gained international prominence following revelations of abuses in prisons, detention centers, and conflict zones during the 20th century. Global awareness intensified after World War II, leading to its explicit prohibition in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and subsequent treaties. Despite these advances, persistent reports from organizations like Amnesty International highlight the ongoing, widespread nature of such violations across diverse legal and cultural contexts.

Incidence

Islamic law provides for retribution or gisas, allowing murderers to be executed in the same manner as they had killed their victims. The law also provides for mutilation or flogging in the case of certain crimes. In 1994 a senior UN human rights official was accused of blasphemy for drawing attention to the inconsistency between these practices and various human rights conventions accepted by Sudan.

Counter-claim

The so-called “denial of the right to freedom from cruel, inhumane, or degrading punishment” is vastly overstated and not a pressing issue. Societies have laws and consequences for a reason, and claims of widespread abuse are often exaggerated. Focusing on this distracts from more urgent problems. Most systems already have safeguards in place, making this concern largely irrelevant in today’s world. It is simply not an important problem.