Who Can Be Held Liable for Torture? New Study Maps National Laws Worldwide

“Does criminal liability for torture stop at state-linked perpetrators, or does it extend to non-state actors? Using original global data, we show that nearly two-thirds of States Parties to the UN Convention against Torture criminalise torture as a separate offence — and that around a quarter of these states extend this criminalisation to all non-state actors,” Ylva Lennartsson Hartmann, a doctoral candidate in public international law, wrote on LinkedIn when the article was published last week.

In the article, published in the Torture Journal of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, she and Karin Sundström, a researcher in political science, also examine two countries that chose different paths: Uganda, which adopted a broad definition of torture including private perpetrators, and Kenya, which largely retained the Convention’s state-centred approach.

Lennartsson Hartmann added that “these cases show how domestic politics, institutions, and history can shape the design of anti-torture legislation.”

For Karin Sundström, the publication marks the end of a long process. On LinkedIn, she described the article as “a project that has been a long time in the making.”

From the article:

• State Parties differ not only in whether they criminalise torture, but also in how they define torture perpetrators, illustrating important variation in the domestic interpretation of international human rights obligations.
• The findings indicate that international commitments, domestic political dynamics, policy learning, institutional and legal fit, and historical experiences of violence interact in shaping national approaches to defining torture perpetrators – illustrated by the processes of the anti-torture laws’ adoption in Uganda and Kenya.

Both Sundström and Lennartsson Hartmann are affiliated with the Stockholm Center on Global Governance.

Full article: Who Can Torture?