Study: Torture reports rose despite UN convention

[kpete]

Source: University of Chicago Press Journals

Study: Torture reports rose despite UN convention

Newly published research suggests that government use of torture has increased worldwide despite international norms discouraging it.

The study, published in The Journal of Legal Studies, found that between 1985 and 2003, reports of state-sponsored torture collected by the U.S. State Department and Amnesty International increased, even as a growing number of countries signed on to the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

"The results could not be clearer: there is no evidence that as more states have joined the CAT, states' use of torture has abated," write study authors Michael Gilligan, a political scientist at New York University, and Nathaniel Nesbitt. "Indeed, if anything, the results suggest that levels of torture have increased."

The U.N. enacted the CAT in 1987. By 2003, more than 75 percent of the world nations had signed on to the convention. But in spite of the growing consensus against torture, Gilligan and Nesbitt found that torture was still reported in 69 percent of the world's nations in 2003. Moreover, the data suggest that CAT signatories were just as likely to torture as non-signatory nations.

Read more: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/uocp-str090209.php

[OnyxCollie]

1. The U.S. State Department collected reports, huh?

I'm guessing everything was hunky-dory at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram.