Can torture ever be justified?

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Torture as defined by the United Nations Convention against Torture (UNCAT) is described as the purposeful infliction of extreme physical suffering on a non-consenting and defenceless human being.  The reference to torture at an international level is only when torture is committed by a state or an agent of the state. Torture is banned through the application of international legislation including the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and the UNCAT. Protection against torture is also offered for vulnerable groups in society such as children and women through the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the United Nations Committee against Torture respectively. Thus, with the vast amount of legislation in place to prevent torture of human beings, this essay will offer a view on why torture can never be justified. In addition, it will also look at the moral justification of torture under extenuating circumstances.

To begin with, the right not to be tortured or treated in an inhuman or degrading way is absolute. Under Article 2 (2) of the UNCAT, the right not to be tortured, unlike other human rights such as the right to freedom of speech, has no exceptions to the rule of it. The prohibition of torture is absolute as based on the important concept of respect for human dignity; this basic right should be available to anyone and is a representation of a well-developed society. This means that torture must not be balanced against any other factors, including national security. All attempts to justify the practice of torture in the name of security in order to obtain information from a suspected terrorist for the purpose of, for example, saving the lives of people who are exposed to an imminent terrorist attack discernibly violate the absolute prohibition of torture as laid down in Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR).

Moreover, the danger of a creating a "slippery slope" exists. Once an exception is allowed on the grounds of pure need, this would open the floodgates to future cases being advanced on the basis of a precedent. Any justification for using torture or other forms of punishment on a human being would then be subjective and injudicious. In times of emergency, who is then to make that moral judgement as to when these acts can be applied and to whom it may be effective against?

Torture of human beings entails of the intentional restriction of one’s own liberties. Bearing in mind the importance of autonomy as protected by Article Five in the ECHR, the torturing of human beings is inherently evil; even without taking into account the physical harm. If the particular act of torture involves going against one’s wishes in the maximalist sense, then it is an even greater evil than otherwise would be the case.

Moreover, the torture of a person has not been proven to be an effective way of obtaining reliable information. People will say just anything to get the torture to stop, and it is obviously inhumane to test the validity of a method through trying different methods of torture on people. In December 2005 following A v Secretary of State for the Home Department (No 2), the House of Lords unanimously overturned a ruling made by the Court of Appeal such that evidence obtained under torture in other jurisdictions could be admitted in British courts.

In addition, John Stuart Mill’s concept of the tyranny of the majority applies with regards to the torture of an individual by the state. Mill thinks that given a chance, a majority would surely step over the fundamental rights of minorities. He argues that in the past the worry had been that governments held power at the expense of its citizens and the tussle for power was one of gaining liberty by confining such governmental powers. However, that power has since been entrusted to its citizens through democratic forms of the government - with the hazard being the majority denies liberty to minority individuals through the use of torture for information. The tyranny of the majority mainly operates through the acts of the public authorities and thus constitutes a violation of individual liberty by the state.

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On the other hand - looking at the moral justification for torture, it is necessary to differentiate between one-off cases of torture and legalised torture.

The argument is that there are one-time acts of torture in cases of emergencies that are morally justifiable. A common example is the ticking bomb scenario in the context of the consequentialist libertarianism approach. The ticking bomb scenario; suppose a terrorist is apprehended, and intelligence reveals that he or she knows where the ticking bomb is hidden that will soon kill many ordinary citizens, or the location and time of a separate terrorist attack. ...

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