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Twenty years ago today, the United States ratified a key international treaty in the fight to end torture. The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, commonly referred to as the Convention against Torture, requires governments to act to prevent torture and other ill-treatment in any territory under their jurisdiction. “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever” can be used to justify torture. To date, 156 countries have made that commitment.

But the Convention against Torture goes further. It requires that governments never send people back to countries where they are at risk of torture or ill-treatment. It also obligates governments to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute all credible allegations of torture. Some form of redress, including rehabilitation and compensation, must be offered for survivors of torture.

Every four years or so, states party to the convention must go before an independent panel of international experts, the Committee against Torture, in Geneva, and explain how they are implementing the treaty. The US is scheduled to do so three weeks from now.

Human Rights Watch recently submitted a report to the committee raising concerns about US compliance with the treaty: the failure to hold officials in the Bush administration accountable for planning and carrying out the torture of terrorism suspects following the attacks of September 11, 2001; the cruel use of prolonged solitary confinement in many prisons in the US; botched executions that make an already inhuman practice even more horrible; and US immigration enforcement practices that return people to countries where they are likely to face torture or ill-treatment.

The Obama administration is considering adopting a discredited Bush-era interpretation of the convention in a way that would ignore the treaty’s ban on mistreatment, short of torture, of non-Americans outside the United States.

But perhaps the biggest question as to whether the US means what it says when it comes to torture concerns the battle over the release of the Senate intelligence committee report on the CIA torture program. Thus far the Obama administration has been unwilling to ensure the prompt release of the report’s summary with limited redactions that do not obfuscate its findings.   

The fight against torture is not over – the United States is in the midst of it. Fully committing to ending torture means shining an unsparing light on past abuses, and holding those responsible to account. We’ll see in November if the United States is truly serious about ending torture.

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