UN pushes countries to end torture

UNITED NATIONS - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Friday urged governments to go on the offensive in the fight against torture, stressing there can be no justification under any circumstances for such “cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment.”
“I urge all United Nations member states that have not yet done so to ratify and implement in good faith the Convention against Torture (CAT),” Ban said in a message marking the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. “Let us step up the fight against torture and cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment and punishment, wherever they occur.”
Echoing Ban’s statements, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said that no exceptional “circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, maybe invoked as a justification of torture.”
Pillay stressed that no one should be let off the hook for torture, including the policy-makers and public officials who define the policy and give the orders.
Since its adoption in 1984, a total of 146 nations, or three-quarters of the world, have ratified the convention, noted Pillay, who urged the remaining countries to sign up and current signatories to abide by its “very clear” rules.
“Many states that have ratified CAT continue to practise torture, some of them on a daily basis,” she said, adding that other states enable torture by sending back asylum-seekers to countries they know carry out torture, which is also clearly prohibited by the treaty.