Articles de revues sur le sujet « Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel »

Without any doubt, the torture and abuse suffered by millions of migrants in all parts of the world is one of the greatest tragedies of our time. The undeniable links between irregular migration and torture are manifold and deeply troubling. Not only is the risk of torture and violence one of the most important “push-factors” causing countless people to flee their country of origin, it is also a frightening and pervasive reality of most irregular migration routes and, most shockingly, even of the treatment they receive by the very countries to which they turn for protection. My mandate as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture is to seek, receive, examine and act upon information regarding torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. My sources of information are governments, international and civil society organizations, but also journalists, individual victims and their lawyers, doctors, relatives, and friends.

In light of psychological research, a growing number of countries/organizations have decided to adopt a model/approach of “investigative interviewing” of suspects that does not rely on coercive or oppressive methods. In 2016, the United Nations’ “Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatments” (law professor Juan Mendez) submitted his report to the United Nations, which stated that “The Special Rapporteur … advocates the development of a universal protocol identifying a set of standards for non-coercive interviewing methods and procedural safeguards that ought, as a matter of law and policy, to be applied at a minimum to all interviews by law enforcement officials, military and intelligence personnel and other bodies with investigative mandates.” When mentioning this “universal protocol” in 2016, the U.N. Special Rapporteur noted that “The essence of an alternative information-gathering model was first captured by the PEACE model of interviewing adopted in 1992 in England and Wales … investigative interviewing can provide positive guidance for the protocol.” The “universal protocol” took three years to produce and was published in 2021. This article will overview (i) the evolution of the PEACE method, (ii) some of the research on effectiveness of aspects of the PEACE method, and (iii) the 2021 publication called Principles of Effective Interviewing.

I began drafting this Introduction on July 30, 2013, the day that Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning was convicted on 19 of 21 charges, including 6 counts of espionage, in a U.S. military court martial. Manning is a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who covertly conveyed to WikiLeaks a massive file of over 700,000 classified documents—including battlefield reports from Iraq, reports from Afghanistan, and State Department cables—thereby publicly disclosing extensive information about U.S. military conduct, and misconduct, of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Manning was subjected to harsh treatment, including solitary confinement during the first nine months of his detention, sparking public outcry and leading a UN Special Rapporteur on Torture to hold that his detention represented cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

With social upheaval, economic strain, and political unrest growing, peaceful demonstrations worldwide are increasingly met with brutal tactics by law enforcement and security forces. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture outlines her call for States to negotiate a new international treaty to ban the manufacture, use and trade in “torture tools” and regulate the trade in law enforcement equipment. Her proposal outlines two critical components: a Prohibited list of items that she has deemed to be inherently cruel, inhuman or degrading, and a second Controlled list of ordinary law enforcement equipment that has a high risk of misuse. Effective international regulation is imperative to curb the indiscriminate use of force by law enforcement and to uphold human dignity. Improved national regulation is also required. Her research has revealed a pervasive market for these items, with more than 335 companies in 54 countries manufacturing or promoting the most egregious torture instruments. Major producers include China, the EU, and the USA, with emerging economies also contributing significantly. The outsourcing of public functions to private security companies further exacerbates the issue, underscoring the pressing need for robust national and international regulations.

Modern states have built burgeoning detention facilities like immigration centers, prisons and police cells that engage in torture and other cruel, inhuman treatments. The law enforcement agencies engage in torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment in the name of counter- terrorism, security threats and soon. The state uses torture and makes it clear that enhanced interrogation techniques makes a person from kidnapping to extra-ordinary rendition, from citizen to unlawful enemy combatant and from human to terrorist. The valley of Kashmir faces torture and other cruel inhuman treatments since insurgency began in 1990’s, with violent uprising and have elicited terrorism. Methods like torture is used as a tool of counter- insurgency by Indian security forces. The government of India used all efforts to crush the movement of self- determination of Kashmir. The strong response from India violates the human rights and international humanitarian laws. The law enforcement agencies, army and para- military forces have engaged in reprisal attacks against civilians resulting in indiscriminate firing, search operations, gang-rapes and burning of houses in the valley. After 1990, the situation in the Kashmir valley deteriorated and Kashmir was declared a disturbed area and laws like Disturbed Area Act (DAA) 1990, Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) 1990 and Public Safety Act (PSA) 1978 were imposed. The purpose of the paper is to examine the concept of Torture in Kashmir valley and bring to light the plight of the victims in the valley.

The article provides a historical analysis of the legislative consolidation of the sign of «special cruelty» and related categories. The legal role of this feature at different stages of the formation of criminal law is determined. The authors consider scientific ideas regarding the interpretation of the concepts of «special cruelty», «torture», «torture» and other forms of cruel behavior in the doctrine of criminal law and law enforcement practice of the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods. In conclusion, the continuity of the norms of the current criminal law in the application and determination of the sign of «special cruelty» is revealed, similar features and significant differences are determined.

The article provides a historical analysis of the legislative consolidation of the sign of «special cruelty» and related categories. The legal role of this feature at different stages of the formation of criminal law is determined. The authors consider scientific ideas regarding the interpretation of the concepts of «special cruelty», «torture», «torture» and other forms of cruel behavior in the doctrine of criminal law and law enforcement practice of the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods. In conclusion, the continuity of the norms of the current criminal law in the application and determination of the sign of «special cruelty» is revealed, similar features and significant differences are determined.

The article provides a historical analysis of the legislative consolidation of the sign of «special cruelty» and related categories. The legal role of this feature at different stages of the formation of criminal law is determined. The authors consider scientific ideas regarding the interpretation of the concepts of «special cruelty», «torture», «torture» and other forms of cruel behavior in the doctrine of criminal law and law enforcement practice of the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods. In conclusion, the continuity of the norms of the current criminal law in the application and determination of the sign of «special cruelty» is revealed, similar features and significant differences are determined.

Cruel and inhumane acts that harm human life and health, as well as humiliate the dignity, are prohibited in most countries of the world, and Russia is no exception in this issue. The article presents an analysis of the institution of responsibility for torture in the Russian Federation. The author comes to the conclusion that the current criminal law of Russia superficially and fragmentally regulates liability for torture, in connection with which the author formulated the proposals to define such act as an independent crime. In the frame of modern globalization, the world community pays special attention to the protection of human rights, in connection with which large-scale international standards have been created a long time ago. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international acts enshrine prohibitions of cruel and inhumane acts that harm human life and health, as well as degrade the dignity.Considering the historical experience of the past, these standards focus on the prohibition of any kind of torture, regardless of the purpose of their implementation.

The subject of research in this article is the long-term experience of a number of countries of the modern world summarized by the author in the field of legislative regulation of criminal liability for torture in many of its manifestations. In addition, the relevant international legal provisions, which are the legal basis for combating torture in national legislation, acted as such. In particular, we are talking about the 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Since the prohibition of torture is absolute, comprehensive and constitutional, which is reflected in a number of state constitutions, the subject of the study was the norms of the basic laws of a number of countries. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that in the article, based on the analysis of the palette of legal definitions of torture existing in foreign law – from brief, reflecting only its main properties, to detailed, descriptive ones, the author's vision of the grounds for distinguishing between these definitions is determined, heterogeneous approaches to understanding how the object of torture, as well as its subject, to determine the place of this crime in the structure of the Special Part of Criminal Laws.

In one of his final press releases, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, Tomás Ojea Quintana, urged that greater attention be given to the further deterioration of the human rights situation in Rakhine State. He submitted that the discrimination and persecution against the Rohingya community in Rakhine could amount to crimes against humanity. In his final report, prior to the end of his six-year mandate, Quintana states that “extrajudicial killing, rape, and other forms of sexual violence, arbitrary detention, torture, and ill-treatment in detention, denial of due process and fair trial rights, and the forcible transfer and severe deprivation of liberty of populations has taken place on a large scale and has been directed against” the Rohingya Muslim population in Rakhine State. However, there is no sign that any of the alleged crimes are being adequately investigated by the competent domestic authorities. Furthermore, the ICC does not have jurisdiction as Myanmar is not a State Party to the Rome Statute.

The problem of the use of torture and violence by employees of places of detention against persons who are there has been relevant in Russia for more than a decade. The purpose of the work is to substantiate the need to create legal conditions for increasing the level of legality in the activities of administrations of places of detention and the effectiveness of protecting human rights and freedoms in such places. There are few scientific works on this problem in Russia. The research methodology is based on general scientific and special methods of scientific knowledge, including dialectical, logical, systemic, formal legal and statistical. It is concluded that an increase in the level of legality in the activities of administrations of places of detention is possible as a result of the signing and ratification by the Russian Federation of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which provides for the creation on the basis of the principles enshrined in it a new unified preventive system for monitoring the observance of human rights in places of detention — the National Preventive Mechanism (NPM). The scientific and practical significance of the study lies in proposing a conceptual change in the existing system of state and public control over the observance of law in places of detention in Russia.

This article analyses the law and procedure of extradition in Pakistan with special reference to Extradition Act 1972. Extradition is a surrender of an accused or convicted person from one state to other state on its request. It is also considered as a system by which one state delivers an accused person to another state on her demand. Moreover, extradition is also used as a tool and considered to be one of the stages to secure international criminal justice system. Furthermore, the focus of the study is to discuss the interpretation of Extradition Act 1972 by the superior courts in their decisions. This study reveals that there are some lacunas in Extradition Act 1972 i.e., there is no provision which safeguards the fugitive offenders from cruel, torture and other inhumane treatment in the requesting state, it does not guarantee the fair trial of the offender in demanding state, additionally, this Act does not provide any right of appeal against the order of surrender. Resultantly, this paper finds that Extradition Act 1972 provide less safeguard to the fugitive offender and did not guarantee the fair trial in the requesting state.

In a small note which Peter Kooijmans wrote to me in answer to a letter in which I congratulated him with his election as Judge in the International Court of Justice – the first Netherlands Judge in the Court after World War II apart from Professor Riphagen who only served as a Judge ad hoc in the Barcelona Traction, Light and Power Company Ltd. case – he stated that he considered himself to be a privileged man. Privileged, because the new position would allow him to continue to remain active in the field of international law considerably beyond the retirement age of 65 which applies to professors of international law and most other people in The Netherlands. Privileged, I would like to add, also in another respect. Very rarely it will be given to one person in his lifetime to fulfil so many different honourable positions in the field of international law and international relations at such a high level of responsibility as has been the case with Peter Kooijmans: Professor of public international law, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, State Secretary (Staatssecretaris) for Foreign Affairs, in particular disarmament matters (1973–1977), Minister for Foreign Affairs and, finally, Judge in the International Court of Justice.

Only a few decades ago a common perception prevailed that the historic­al Native Americans were very prone to violence and warfare. Scalping and torture were seen as a specific custom attached into their ideology and sociocultural ethos. However in the 1960s a completely reversed picture started to emerge, following the course of other worldwide movements, such as ethnic rights, pan-Indianism, ecological conscience, revisionist historiography and so on. Immediately the Native American people came to be seen as the victims of the European colonialism and the Whites were the bad guys who massacred innocent women and children, either at Sand Creek or in Vietnam. Books were written in which the historians pointed out that the practice of scalping was actually not present in the Americas before the whites came. This theory drew sustenance from some early colonial accounts, especially from the Dutch and New England colonies, where it was documented that a special bounty was offered for Indian scalps. According to this idea, the practice of scalping among the Indians escalated only after this. On the other hand, the blame fell on the Iroquois tribesmen, whose cruel fighting spread terror throughout the seventeenth century, when they expanded an empire in the north eastern wilderness. This accords with those theorists who wanted to maintain a more balanced view of the diffusion of scalping and torture, agreeing that these traits were indeed present in Pre-Columbian America, but limited only to the Iroquoians of the east. Colonial American history has been rewritten every now and then. In the 1980s, and in the field of archaeology especially, a completely new set of insights have arisen. There has been a secondary burial of the myth of Noble Savage and a return of the old Wild Indian idea, but this time stripped of its cartoon stereo­typical attachments. The Indians are now seen as being like any other human beings, with their usual mixture of vices and virtues. Understanding this, one may approach such a topic as scalping and torture without more bias than when reading of any practice of atrocities in human history.

Indonesia is described as cold-blooded, brutal, sadistic, cruel and inhumanity like a monster in Australian film, Balibo Five. This research aims to describe the representation of Indonesian in cinematography package and to find the dominant ideology. Semiotic is used to answer these objectives by observing three level of signs e.g. reality, representations and ideology. The result shows that there are some forms of violation which committed by Indonesian special forces troops such as assassination, torture, persecution and other cruel and human degrading treatment that violate human rights and accused them as war criminal. In addition, dominant ideology which operates is in form of demonization, dehumanization and sentiment towards Indonesia. Based on the result, this film become propaganda which potentially influence its viewer the spirit of anti-Indonesia especially amongst Australian to sympathize and uphold justice for the victims.Keywords: indonesia, balibo five, film, representation, semiotics ABSTRAKIndonesia dalam film Balibo Five digambarkan sebagai yang kejam, brutal dan tidak manusiawi seperti sosok monster. Penelitian ini mengungkap penggambaran Indonesia dan makna di balik penggambaran sinematografi film. Analisis semiotika digunakan untuk membaca tanda-tanda sinematografi yang menyusun film tersebut dengan melihat pada tigal level tanda yakni level reality, representations dan ideology. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa dalam Balibo Five banyak sekali menonjolkan tindak kekerasan yang dilakukan oleh tentara Indonesia seperti pembunuhan, penyiksaan, penganiayaan dan lain sebagainya yang merujuk pada pelanggaran HAM dan kejahatan perang. Dominan ditampilkan dalam bentuk penyerupaan terhadap setan, merendahkan martabat manusia dan penyebaran kebencian. Ini merupakan media propaganda anti-Indonesia yang menyulut sentimen terhadap Indonesia serta mempengaruhi warga Australia agar bersimpati dan berpartisipasi untuk menegakkan keadilan terhadap para korban tersebut.Kata kunci : indonesia, balibo five, film, representasi, semiotika

The problematic issues of legislative consolidation and application of forced feeding to convicts who refuse to take food in institutions of execution of punishment are considered. An analysis of domestic and international legislation in the field of treatment of convicts, prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment, principles of medical ethics and deontology regarding the admissibility of forced feeding of persons who have declared a hunger strike was carried out. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights against Ukraine, which found a violation of Article 3 of the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in the context of the treatment of convicts during their forced feeding, which was classified as torture. Emphasis has been placed on the fact that the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in itself does not prohibit forced feeding, the purpose of which is to save the life of a specific person who is in custody and who deliberately refuses to eat. At the same time, it has been emphasized the need to comply with the requirements established by the European Court of Human Rights regarding the implementation of this procedure. It has been proposed to abandon and prohibit the forced feeding of a mentally healthy and capable person who has declared a hunger strike, contrary to his informed and voluntary refusal, in the form in which it currently exists, replacing it with artificial feeding (supportive therapy) with the express or necessarily implied consent of the person.

The article analyzes the general and special international legal acts in the field of regulation of the right to the highest standard of living (right to health) of minors deprived of liberty, in particular: Declaration of the Rights of the Child, 1924, United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child, 1959, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966, Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989, United Nations Minimum Standard Rules on the Administration of Juvenile Justice (Beijing Rules), 1985, United Nations Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency (The Riyadh Guidelines), 1990, UN General Assembly special resolutions on the protection of the rights of the child, including children deprived of their liberty, etc. The emphasis is placed on key problematic aspects of the protection of the right to health of minors deprived of their liberty, in particular: the use of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; harm to the mental and physical health of children in all situations of imprisonment; the spread of sexually transmitted infections. The article focuses on the special needs of children with disabilities. Given the existing problems of drug use, which contribute to the spread of infectious diseases among the categories of prisoners, cause significant harm to the health of minors, attention is focused on the characteristics of special rules in this area. Given the fact that the emergence and spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has become a modern threat and a challenge to health of population in general, including persons deprived of their liberty, attention is paid to international acts, which set out recommendations to protect this category of persons during the pandemic. Relevant conclusions and recommendations have been made to improve the status of minors deprived of their liberty.

Such is its pervasiveness that human rights discourse is used to legitimise humanitarian and military intervention in the affairs of other states, provide a rationale for ‘ethical’ foreign policy, justify the punishment of war crimes, and validate the formation of international coalitions mandated to eradicate terrorism wherever its is found. At grass-roots level, human rights talk is deployed to lobby governments and to press for socioeconomic and legal change, to combat the dehumanising treatment of specific populations, to ground educational initiatives and spawn local, national, international, and sometimes global networks oriented to its advancement, and to induce the patient and meticulous documentation of its violations. In terms of women, human rights activism has been instrumental in problematising violence against women, prompting the recognition by the UN Human Rights Commission in 1992 of rape during war as a form of torture, and as a war crime or crime against humanity in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (which came into force in 2001). It also led to the appointment in 1994 by the UN Human Rights Commission of Radhika Coomaraswamy as the first Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and its Causes and Consequences. Activities centring on human rights produced the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 18 December 1979 and became operational as an international treaty on 3 September 1981 when it was ratified by its twentieth signatory.

A large and impressive literature has arisen over the past fifteen years concerning the emergence, transfer, and sustenance of political norms in international life. The presumption of this literature has been, for the most part, that the winds of normative change blow in a progressive direction, toward greater or more stringent normative control of individual or state behavior. Constructivist accounts detail a spiral of mutual normative reinforcement as actors and institutions discover the advantages of normative self- and other evaluation. There is also now much interesting research focused on the question of how to predict the emergence of future norms.I focus, however, on a different issue here: the death of norms that had once seemed well internalized and institutionalized. The issue arises in relation to one of the most dramatic features in the defense policy of the United States since 2001: the crumbling of highly restrictive normative regimes prohibiting interrogatory torture and assassination as part of the “global war on terror.” My aim here is to sketch what I take to be the central features of cases in which even norms that are clearly defined and apparently well internalized in a democracy nonetheless lose their grip on policy. The ultimate lesson, however, is an unappealing irony: While democracies surely do better than authoritarian regimes in adopting and internalizing certain kinds of constraints, in part because of a greater sensitivity to public mobilization around normative questions, that same sensitivity makes the long-term survival of these norms precarious. In particular, I suggest that force-constraining norms are most effectively internalized by coherent and relatively insulated professional cadres who see themselves as needing to act consistently over time. But in a democracy the values and arguments of those cadres are susceptible to being undermined by a combination of public panic and the invocation by policymakers of a public interest that can override the claims both of law and pragmatic restraint. Democracy, hence, can be at the same time both fertile and toxic: fertile as a source of humanitarian values and institutions, but toxic to the very institutions it cultivates.The model I will describe may be of predictive use in helping us to see the special vulnerability of normative orders in democracies. But my hope is that it is also constructive in showing us how states and institutions committed to maintaining a certain normative order, especially democratic states, might best try to entrench those norms. While my argument is conceptual and philosophical, it draws on this recent history. I also add two qualifications to this article's title. First, I am not addressingallnorms, but specific norms concerning the state use of force in national security policy. I therefore do not make claims about the generalizability of the conflict I describe to other norms, for example, norms of racial, sexual, or religious orthodoxy or hierarchy, or norms of reciprocal interaction. Second, reports of a norm's death are frequently exaggerated, since norms can be latent, then resurrected. Arguably, the anti-torture norm was resuscitated by President Obama in 2009 when, as one of his first official acts as chief executive, he moved to prohibit cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees. I write here about the path of decay, whether or not that path is unidirectional, and why previously salient norms no longer seem to govern policy choice among political decision-makers.

The main international standards for the protection and observance of the rights of prisoners of war and the legal acts that regulate them were considered. It was revealed that the main international standards regulating the protection and observance of the rights of prisoners of war include: Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, Statute of the International Committee of the Red Cross, UN Resolution on the Protection of Human Rights in Counter-Terrorism, Art. 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Convention against Torture and other legal acts. Within the framework of the UN, there are also a number of resolutions aimed at protecting the rights of prisoners of war. The application of international standards regarding prisoners of war forms a system of international humanitarian law. Existing international standards and national laws and policies are aimed at the safety, health and wellbeing of military personnel, as well as at preventing violations of their rights during armed conflicts. It was determined that the Geneva Conventions set the minimum standards for the treatment of prisoners of war and civilians who are in the hands of the enemy during an armed conflict. Requirements for the maintenance of prisoners of war include: requirements for food, compliance with hygiene standards, the provision of the right to receive education and many more rights for prisoners, as well as requirements for the prevention of cruel treatment, humiliation, etc. The main principles are the principles of humanity, non-discrimination and reciprocity. Court cases regarding prisoners of war are decided in the Nuremberg and Tokyo courts, and there are no other special courts for the military. Currently, a number of problems have been identified with respect to the treatment of prisoners of war. Unsolved problems require finding new ways to solve them and improve the treatment of prisoners of war in the world.

Article 1 paragraph (3) of the Constitution of 1945 (UUD 1945) stated that Indonesia is a Rule of Law. One feature of the Rule of Law is the existence of human rights in the state administration. Indonesia, since independence on August 17, 1945 has asserted the defense of human rights as stated in the opening clause and in the torso of the 1945 Constitution Article 27-34. In the era of reform, on the Government of President Habibie, the President and the Parliament ratified the UN convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading human dignity into Law number 5 of 1998. Then the MPR also publishes the statutes of MPR No. XVII/MPR/1998 on Human Rights, which was followed up with the appearance of Law No. 39 of 1999 on human rights. In accordance with the law in Indonesia based on the sort of Law No. 12 of 2011, the actual products that have been issued by the Government (the MPR, DPR and President) that follow up the substance of Human Rights in the Constitution with established Assembly and the law is already correct. But when the MPR then does the second amendment to the Constitution on August 18, 2000 by adding a special article chapters and contains about Human Rights (as mentioned in Chapter X-A section 28 A-J), have made the complexity hierarchy of law in Indonesia because it is not in accordance with the substance of article 7 of Law No. 12 of 2011. How To Cite: Sardol, S. (2014). Human Rights Arrangement on Indonesian Law. Rechtsidee, 1(1), 85-100. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.21070/jihr.v1i1.105

The fundamental human rights universally recognized in international law are, in particular: the right to life; the right not to be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; the right to privacy, personal and family secrecy, protection of one’s honor and dignity, freedom of conscience and religion, etc. During hostilities, these fundamental values are particularly vulnerable, and their adherence to military conflict is directly dependent on the motives and moral preconditions for such aggression. The norms of international humanitarian law establish appropriate prohibitions or restrictions on the use of certain means and methods of armed struggle, ensuring the protection of victims of conflict and determining the responsibility for violating these norms. International humanitarian law is based on the principle of distinction between combatants and non-combatants, in connection with which the article pays special attention to the protection of the civilian population and the moral and legal components of such protection. Analyzing the convention agreements on the protection of civilians and victims of war, one can observe such fundamental moral components of their rights as life, respect, freedom of conscience and religion, prohibition of torture and humiliation, humane treatment, protection during hostilities and more. In particular, the UN International Court of Justice has repeatedly deduced the responsibilities of the parties to a military conflict from such a general principle of law as the “basic principles of humanity”.Article 3 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War provides for a minimum commitment of the parties in the event of armed conflict to non-combatants, including the following acts against the above: personality, including all forms of murder, mutilation, ill-treatment and torture; b) hostage-taking; c) abuse of human dignity, in particular abusive and degrading treatment; d) the conviction and application of punishment without a prior judgment rendered by a court duly established and providing judicial guarantees recognized by civilized peoples as necessary. It is well known that the attitude of the Russian aggressor towards the peaceful Ukrainian civilian population in its barbarism is not limited to the usual understanding of human rights violations and the principle of humanism during armed conflict. In view of this, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the Resolution “On the Statement of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine” On the Russian Federation’s Genocide in Ukraine “”, which recognizes the actions committed by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and its political and military leadership during the last phase of against Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, with the genocide of the Ukrainian people. This takes into account the consistency and systemic policy of the Russian Federation aimed at mass extermination of the population of Ukraine, violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and the elimination of national statehood of Ukraine. Key words: war, armed conflict, genocide, dignity, humanism, morality, respect, human rights, civilian population

The main task of Ukraine as a democratical state is to affirm the rule of law and protect human rights and freedoms. Today, theissues of ensuring human rights and freedoms in the activities of law enforcement agencies remain more relevant than ever, as evidencedby the negative dynamics of increasing the number of decisions taken by the European Court of Human Rights regardingUkraine. A significant number of such decisions concerns violations of fundamental rights and freedoms, including the right to libertyand security of person, the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or search. The issue of software forhuman rights, whose freedom is limited, needs special attention. From this position, the introduction of a system of accounting andrecording of actions against a detainee – Custody Records – is of paramount importance for the domestic law enforcement system.Custody Records is a system for ensuring the safety of detainees and staff of temporary detention facilities, which should makeit to record all actions that take place with detainees in the following period: from the moment of actual detention, until the court choosespre-trial detention and release persons in custody. The main task of Custody Records is to improve the standards of protection of therights of detainees by introduction: 1) mandatory «interview» during the submission to the police; 2) electronic recording of all casesconcerning the detained person, starting the moment of his/her actual security; 3) remote external control.«Interview with a detainee» is one of the key innovations of the Custody Records system and is one of the important proceduralissues of the system. The procedure for conducting such an interview remains regulated only at the level of departmental regulations, andthere are no doctrinal studies of this type of the urgent need for normative definition and coverage of the features of «interview with adetainee» in order to regulate the procedure for its conduct at the legislative level. Because, conducting an «interview with a detainee»,wich creates a fixation of data from the words of the person, wich can significantly increase the security guarantee for such people.

This article provides an understanding of the relevance and importance of the principles of human rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The article pays special attention to the importance of observing children's rights and encouraging advocacy activities of public and children's organizations regarding the protection of children's rights. In the presented study, the author analyzes the articles of the Convention and considers them as social rights (the right to life and development, health care and access to medical care, the right to education, family life, family reunification, the right to assistance in the maximum possible social integration for disabled children, as well as the right to support parents so that they can protect the rights of their children), economic rights (the right to decent living conditions, to social security, to protection from economic exploitation), cultural rights (the right to respect for language, culture and religion, for the abolition of traditional practices that may harm the well-being of the child), protective rights (the right to protect the interests of the child, protection from physical and sexual violence and exploitation, protection from participation in military conflicts, protection from abuse rights and humiliation), civil and political rights (the right to be heard and taken seriously, the right to freedom from discrimination in the exercise of rights, the right to freedom of religion and belief, the right to privacy, to information, to respect for physical and personal integrity and freedom from all forms of violence, torture or other cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment, the right to respect for the order of detention and criminal judiciary). It is emphasized that the mentioned international legal act plays an important fundamental role in the development of social consciousness and the practice of protecting children's rights and freedoms. It provides the legal basis for the necessary protection of persons under the age of 18.

The purpose of the research. A parliamentary ombudsman which exists in the constitutional mechanism of many modern states performs two main functions: to exercise control over the legality of the activities of the public administration and to consider individual complaints related to the violation of human rights and freedoms. The office of parliamentary ombudsman for administration (civil ombudsman) was founded in Norway in 1962, ten years after the foundation of the position of the military ombudsman. The present article is devoted to the analysis of the legal status of the Norwegian parliamentary civil ombudsman, the procedure for appointing, the functions and powers of the civil ombudsman, the procedure for considering of the incoming complaints. The authors pay special attention to such element of the status of the parliamentary civil ombudsman as a national preventive mechanism. The article was written on the basis of an analysis of the new Act on the Parliamentary Ombudsman for Control of Administration dd. June 18, 2021, which introduced a number of changes to the status and procedure for exercising powers by the civil ombudsman. The results: The new Act changes the title of the position. Now it is officially referred to as the parliamentary ombudsman for control of the administration. The word "control" which appeared in the title of the position emphasizes the strengthening of the protective function of the Norwegian civil ombudsman, as well as the expansion of his/her powers to supervise the activities of public bodies and officials. The current legislation simultaneously considers the parliamentary civil ombudsman as a national preventive mechanism, which is entitled to issue recommendations in order to improve the treatment and conditions of detention of persons deprived of their liberty, as well as to prevent torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Despite the rather broad powers of the Norwegian parliamentary civil ombudsman, unlike the parliamentary ombudsmen of some other countries, he/she does not have the legally enshrined right to initiate changes to the current legislation to fill in the gaps or improve it in order to more fully regulate the mechanisms for protecting the human rights and freedoms. The analysis of statistical data indicates a trend towards an increase in the number of applications to the parliamentary civil ombudsman in recent years. This fact shows not only an increase in cases of violations of human rights by the authorities and officials during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also, in general, an increase citizens’ confidence in this national mechanism for protecting fundamental human rights an freedoms. The adoption of the new Act also reflects the desire of the Norwegian members of parliament to improve the model of the civil ombudsman in order to ensure its efficiency.

- The legislative and operational measures recently adopted by Italy in order to prevent and repress clandestine immigration raise the problem of their consistency with Italy's international obligations conncerning the protection of human rights. With a view to assessing the actual terms of such a problem, contents and extent of the protection to be afforded to irregular migrants, under the international law of human rights, must be preliminarily determined. Considering the specific legal situation of Italy, in the light of its participation both to the European Convention of Human Rights and to the International Covenants on Human Rights, as well as to many other conventions dealing with the protection of human rights, it clearly turns out that Italy is internationally bound to respect and protect a number of basic rights of irregular migrants. Such rights include, at the very least, the right to life, the right not to be subjected to torture (or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment), and the right not to be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. Respect for such rights also implies an absolute non-refoulement obligation, that is an obligation not to expel or return an irregular migrant to another State where there is an actual risk that his or her rights would be violated. Moreover, basic rights of clandestine immigrants include the right to family unity, the right not to be subjected to collective expulsion, and (closely linked with this latter right) the right to a fair and transparent procedure of expulsion or repatriation, implying a reasonable and objective examination of the particular case of each individual. Turning to economic, social and cultural rights, an internationally lawful treatment of irregular migrants requires compliance with international obligations protecting the right to health and medical care, the right to primary education, and some core labour rights. The principle of non discrimination plays obviously a crucial role in view of correctly implementing all these international obligations with respect to the specific situation of irregulars migrants. Lastly, special and stronger human rights protection is required when the irregular migrants are children, or victims of trafficking in persons. In the light of the international human rights obligations which are applicable to the peculiar situation of irregular migrants, some of the legislative and operational measures adopted by Italy to struggle against clandestine immigration seem indeed to be inconsistent not only with such obligations (and with the increasing international trend towards the "non criminalization" of clandestine immigrants by reason of their irregular position), but also - at least in part - with the EU legal standards provided for by the recent 2008/115/EC Directive on common standards and procedures for returning illegally staying third-country nationals. This seems to be true, for example, with regard both to the new Article 10 bis inserted in the Legislative Decree n. 286 on immigration, introducing the crime of clandestine immigration, and to the new paragraph 11 bis of Art. 61 of the Criminal Code, introducing a general aggravating circumstance consisting in the irregular status of the immigrant author of a crime. But this seems particularly true and blameworthy with regard to the practice of intercepting crumbling boats full of migrants on the high seas and coercively driving them back to Libya.

The article examines the legal nature of absolute human rights in the field of health care. It has been substantiated that certain personal inalienable rights of an adult able-bodied patient are derived from the constitutional absolute human rights. These include the right to consent to medical intervention, the right to refuse medical intervention and the right to receive medical information about himself/herself. Оbjective process of personal autonomy boundaries expanding in the healthcare sector makes the studied issues topical. There is an expansion of legal opportunities for a person to allow, restrict or prohibit interference with privacy in the provision of medical care in absolute legal relations. In view of the above, there is a need for scientific analysis of the phenomenon of absolute human rights in the field of health care, revision of the established doctrinal provisions and verification of compliance with positive legal regulation. The purpose and objectives of the study of absolute human rights in the field of health care are: to substantiate the specifics of those constitutional human rights in the field of health care, which have the nature and characteristics of absolute rights; to determine the appropriate legal grounds for their restriction; to find the relationship between absolute constitutional and personal non-property rights in the field of health care. The status of right as an absolute constitutional right presupposes certain objective differences in the process of exercise of this right and in the mechanism of intervention of the state and other participants in relations of its exercise. The absolute status of the right presupposes that the exercise of the right by its subject is opposed by the legal obligation of all other participants in the relationship to refrain from any factual and legal actions or omissions that may lead to its violation. Also, in the modern understanding of the absoluteness of right there is such a dimension as a special order of restriction. The constitutional principle of absolute effect means that exceptions to the restriction of the scope of human and civil rights and freedoms are established only by the Constitution of Ukraine itself, and not by laws or other normative acts. This principle also means that all restrictions on rights that have constitutional protection, despite the fact that they are additionally regulated or protected by sectoral legislation, must be interpreted and regulated taking into account the primacy of constitutional protection of rights. Therefore, the enshrinement of constitutional human rights in special legislation should pursue the goal of providing additional protection of these rights and additional mechanisms for their implementation. Personal non-property rights to consent to and refuse medical intervention in Ukraine are derived from the human rights enshrined in Art. 28 and Art. 29 of the Constitution of Ukraine, which grant the right to respect for dignity and personal inviolability. Such a doctrinal binding of the rule of Art. 28 to the context of medical care is quite appropriate, because the term “medical experiments” can be broadly attributed to any medical intervention. Constitutional right to inviolability of Art. 29 also includes physical integrity and the prohibition of interference with the human body by means of medical methods of diagnosis, prevention, treatment without consent. Thus, the constitutional prohibition to subject a person without his or her free consent to medical intervention, as well as the constitutional prohibition of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, is absolute in Ukraine and is subject to no restrictions. Rule of Art. 32 of the Constitution of Ukraine allows to extend the constitutional regulation on the interpretation of the right of a person to receive at his/her own will and at any time all medical information about himself/herself. The right of a person to receive medical information about himself/herself has the features of an absolute right, as all other subjects – public authorities and bodies of local self-government, institutions, and organisations – have a duty to refrain from actions or omissions that may lead to a violation of this right. Also, the right to information about oneself belongs to the absolute right on such a basis as a special procedure of restriction. In the light of what has been said about the nature of absolute constitutional right and the special conditions of its restriction, any restriction of the right to consent to medical intervention, to refuse to receive medical information from an able-bodied adult is unconstitutional. However, both the legislation and the legal doctrine of Ukraine allow the possibility of ignoring the human right to consent to medical intervention, refusal of such, the right to medical information about himself/herself on various legal grounds provided by civil law. Paragraph 5 of Art. 284 of the Civil Code of Ukraine allows to provide medical care and medical intervention without the consent of the patient. Item 3 of Art. 285 of the Civil Code of Ukraine allows medical workers to provide incomplete information about the state of health of a person, to limit the possibility of acquaintance with certain medical documents. The enshrinement of constitutional human rights in special legislation as personal non-property rights of an individual should pursue the goal of additional protection of these rights relating to particularly vulnerable public and personal goods. Contrary to this, the current civil legislation introduces additional grounds for restricting the constitutional absolute rights in addition to those contained in the Constitution of Ukraine. Civil law should also provide additional legal safeguards for respect for the dignity and inviolability of the person in civil relations in the field of medicine, in particular, to promote the exercise of the potential of absolute constitutional human rights in transparent and accessible civil law mechanisms. Thus, the inclusion of constitutional human rights in civil law should provide additional legal safeguards for respect for the dignity and inviolability of the person in civil relations and additional civil remedies for the exercise of human autonomy in the field of medicine. The author offers some civil remedies for the patient to exercise their absolute rights.

The United Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) proclaims that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood (Article 1),” and are “entitled to all the rights and freedoms outlined in (said) Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinions, national or social origin, property, birth or another status. (Article 2)” This formal declaration is supposed to be a simple institutionalization of a generally recognized realism – those human beings are born with inherent dignity, from which fundamental basic human rights flow and which provides reasonable justification for fostering justice and equality despite each person’s individuality. It is an affirmation that amidst personal and cultural divergences, human beings are called upon to respect each other primarily on account of their shared humanity, and not based on wealth, power, educational background, race, gender, and other social clusters – to treat each other fairly without discrimination. However, while the aforementioned international convention narrates a chronicle filled with beautiful social expectations, reality may be chanting a different narrative. Across different epochs, stories of horrifying violations of human rights have reverberated throughout the world. The infamous holocaust during the 2nd World War, the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, and the martial law defilements during the Marcos regime in the Philippines are just some of the many horrific instances of human rights violations that have shocked humanity. One of the more prominent reasons for the occurrence of different human rights violations is deleterious discrimination – the arrogant sense of superiority that some assert over others, the conceited belief of being entitled with a guaranteed place atop the zenith of societal hierarchies at the detriment of those who do not share the same shade, nook or status. To address these discriminatory leanings of different cultures and States and provide international legal frameworks for ensuring that basic human rights are genuinely protected and promoted, the United Nations (U.N.) was created. To realize the objectives for its establishment, sundry international conventions have been crafted, negotiated, issued, and implemented. In the area of human rights protection, the primordial international convention is the UDHR. Two social groups that suffer from significant discrimination as to their capacity to properly enjoy and exercise basic human rights are refugees and stateless persons, which are governed by the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and its 1967 Protocol, and the 1954 Convention Relating to Status of Stateless Persons, respectively. Because of their conditions and contextual situations, they are very vulnerable to being discriminated against and abused. This humanitarian crisis has been haunting the worldfor decades already and has also been knocking at the doorsteps of the Philippines in recent times, whose presence in the country has been rapid. Unfortunately, very few are aware of their existence, much less care about the predicaments and struggles of refugees and stateless persons worldwide and in the Philippines. 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Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities.htmlUnited Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (1951) United Nations Convention relating to the status of refugees. https://www.unhcr.org/1951-refugee-convention.htmlUnited Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (1954) Convention relating to status of stateless persons https://unhcr.org/ibelong/wpcontent/uploads/1954-Convention-relating-to-the-Status-of-Stateless-Persons_ENG.pdfUnited Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (1961) Convention onthe reduction of statelessness https://unhcr.org/ibelong/wpcontent/uploads/1961-Convention-on-the-reduction-of-Statelessness_ENG.pdfUnited Nations Human Rights (1965). International convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination (CERD). General Assembly resolution 2106 (XX) https://www.ohchr.org/en/instrumentsmechanisms/instruments/international-convention-eliminationall-forms-racialUnited Nations Human Rights (1966). International covenant on civil and political rights (CCPR). General Assembly resolution no. 2200A (XXI). https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rightsUnited Nations Human Rights (1966). International covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (CESCR). General Assembly resolution no. 2200A (XXI). https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/ instruments /international-covenanteconomic-social-and-cultural-rightsUnited Nations Human Rights (1979). Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). UnitedNations General Assembly. https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-elimination-allforms-discrimination-against-womenUnited Nations Human Rights (1984). Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (General Assembly resolution no. 39). https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms /instruments/convention-against-torture-and-other-cruel-inhuman-ordegradingUnited Nations Human Rights (1989). Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). General Assembly resolution 44. https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention- rights-childUnited Nations Human Rights (1990). International convention on the protection of the rights of all migrant workers (CMW) General Assembly resolution 45/158. https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-convention-protection-rights-all-migrant-workersUnited Nations. Peace, dignity,and equality on a healthy planet. 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<p>Conversion therapies have been classified as inhuman treatment or torture on several instances, including by the UN Special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and are explicitly prohibited by several professional bodies around the world such as the World Medical Association and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. They have been defined as “any treatment, practice or sustained effort that aims to change, repress and, or eliminate a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity and, or gender expression” (Malta, 2016).</p><p>However, based on its functional definition, the concept of “conversion therapy” can be successfully used as a broader analytical framework to describe carceral practices that regulate gender identity and expression and, in particular, those implemented by sex-segregated detention facilities.</p><p>This paper argues that, coupled with often restrictive and sometimes impossible means for accessing legal gender recognition to change one’s identity documents, single-sex detention acts as a form of conversion therapy for trans and gender diverse people at least in two ways by coercing detainees into adopting gender expression modes that do not align with their gender identity. In that sense, it can be said that sex-segregated detention acts to change the gender identity or expression of gender diverse detainees and, therefore, can amount to inhuman treatment or torture.</p>

Persons with disabilities have an equal right to access health services, including general health services and disability-related health services. In accessing health care, persons with disabilities encounter many barriers. These include stereotypes about disability on the part of health care providers; a lack of appropriately-trained health care staff; imbalanced power relationships between persons with health needs and medical professionals; inaccessible health care facilities; inaccessible health-related information; and a lack of individualised accommodations.1 These barriers are heightened in the circumstances of persons with psychosocial disabilities who face additional challenges, including legally-sanctioned involuntary commitment; forced treatment; and the use of restraints and solitary confinement in mental health care institutions.In addition, certain categories of persons with psychosocial disabilities require particular attention in health care settings. In this regard, the Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment in his 2013 report notes that ‘women living with disabilities, with psychiatric labels in particular, are at risk of multiple forms of discrimination and abuse inhealth-care settings’.2

The article is based on investigations by two branches of the United Nations Human Rights Council into the treatment of the whistleblower journalist, Julian Assange – the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. The UN investigations analysed for this ‘Acting Up’ article show that Julian Assange is an inconvenient dissident, who has been subjected to persecution by liberal democracies rather than authoritarian regimes. Previous research into whistleblowing has highlighted the courage and risks taken by individual whistleblowers in speaking truth to power however, this case highlights a different facet of speaking truth to power which shows how lawyers, activists and other professionals often refuse to do this because of the professional costs of speaking up for an apparently toxic individual. This article argues that the UN investigations have built a ‘counter-archive’ of suppressed facts about the case, which challenges the ‘collective amnesia’ of the public discourse. This case demonstrates that speaking truth to power requires not only individual courage but the active support of inconvenient dissidents, who lack other civil society support.