United Nations Convention Against Torture

The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (United Nations Convention against Torture) is an international human rights instrument, under the review of the United Nations, that aims to prevent torture around the world.

The Convention requires states to take effective measures to prevent torture within their borders, and forbids states to transport people to any country where there is reason to believe they will be tortured.

The text of the Convention was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1984 and, following ratification by the 20th state party, it came into force on 26 June 1987. 26 June is now recognised as the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, in honour of the Convention. As of September 2012, the Convention had 151 parties.

Read more about United Nations Convention Against Torture:  Summary, Optional Protocol, Committee Against Torture

Famous quotes containing the words united, nations, convention and/or torture:

    What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others.
    Carlos Fuentes (b. 1928)

    Firm in our beliefs without dismay,
    In any game the nations want to play.
    A golden age of poetry and power
    Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    No convention gets to be a convention at all except by grace of a lot of clever and powerful people first inventing it, and then imposing it on others. You can be pretty sure, if you are strictly conventional, that you are following genius—a long way off. And unless you are a genius yourself, that is a good thing to do.
    Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)

    One line typed twenty years ago
    can be blazed on a wall in spraypaint
    to glorify art as detachment
    or torture of those we
    did not love but also
    did not want to kill.
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)