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Torture is horrible actions done to people that are prisoners, that create great fear and pain so that they will confess to crimes or tell everything they know to their jailers. The consequences in tortures are cuts in body, burnings, dislocation in bones, application of extreme temperatures, violation, etc., including death.
Since the years B.C., Barbarian laws allowed for torture. They would start to question the prisoner and if he or she didn’t answer, great pain was made in the bones and many parts of the body. In major cases, they killed the prisoners during torturing. This method was accepted during Barbarian laws to capture a traitor and make the questions during torture. The Inquisition also accepted torturing heretics to confess how and why they were heretics. In the Inquisition there were many types of torture such as drowning, burning, especially the feet, and the dislocation of bones. Those methods of torture ended in XIX Century.
The Barbarians lived in Germany and they invented the torture and the Inquisition started in France and it went to Portugal, Spain, Italy especially Rome, and America. The Inquisition is the main important event where torture happened.
The following is a report on what the Chairperson of the Committee against Torture said to the Third Committee.
CLAUDIO GROSSMAN, Chairperson of the Committee against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,.
He explained that the Committee against Torture was mandated to consider country reports, undertake inquiries and adopt General Comments. Of the 146 States that had ratified or acceded to the Convention on Torture, 39 had never submitted a report. That constituted a violation of their obligations. Of the 107 States that had submitted at least one report, the Committee had adopted 267 sets of concluding observations. Only 64 of the 146 States parties had made the declaration recognizing the Committee’s competence to examine complaints presented by individuals, which limited its ability to supervise full compliance of the Convention. So far, 402 individual complaints had been registered. Of those, the Committee had considered 288 complaints and found violations in 48. As for General Comments, the Committee had adopted two: one in the context of individual complaints with respect to non-refoulement, and a second on States’ parties obligations to prevent torture.
“As a member of the Committee, I have seen how, through our petition procedures, individuals have been protected from being sent to countries where they run the risk of being tortured, and cases of satisfaction for minority groups subjected to inhuman treatment,” he said. But, he added, despite the existence of an impressive international legal framework, “we cannot affirm that torture has decreased”.
He said there were numerous instances where the Convention’s provisions and recommendations were not implemented. In some States, there was a refusal to adopt a clear definition of torture, or to criminalize torture. They practised the expulsion, return and extradition of persons to States where there was substantial grounds for believing they were in danger of being subjected to torture. They engaged in the “rendition” of suspects with the purpose of submitting them to acts of torture in countries that continued to use torture as a means of investigation and interrogation.
He ended with a quote from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in which he said the most important things that had happened to mankind were first imagined and then translated into reality. The realization of the ideals behind the Convention against Torture was possible, he said, urging States to work towards achieving it.
MISSION:As you can see from the speech above the UN has tried to do things to rid the world of torture, but it doesn’t seem to be happening very fast. Delegates you must represent your countries to find the solution to stop this problem of torture. Can you find good solutions and suggestions to stop it? We need to find a way that we do not just talk about stopping torture but actually do it.
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