Stop Non-State Torture: A Victim-Centred Approach - A Companion Paper to the Legal Analysis Paper

 

1.    Framework of the Categories of Non-State Torture Victimizations 

Respectful of the expert and collective knowledge members of the NST Working Group have and of their ongoing research, the following framework was used to organize non-State torture victimizations into four categories. Figure 1 illustrates these categories as: 

 

Category 1: Non-State Torture. It utilizes the term “classic” which is a common reference used to describe the behaviours or acts perpetrated by State torturers such as governmental police or military personnel.5 However, research shows that non-State torturers inflict the same or similar acts of torture as State torturers and that a “patriarchal divide” exists whereby the human right not to be subjected to torture has been discriminatorily applied to the lives of men.6 Consequently, non-State torture victimizations committed against women and girls have been globally ignored and continue to be perpetrated by parents, other family members, guardians, peers, a spouse, and like-minded non-State actors.  

Category 2: Commercial-Based Non-State Torture. It identifies that non-State torture is committed in situations where the perpetrators gain financially or in other ways. This includes non-State actors who exploit predominately girls and women in sexualized human trafficking, in prostitution, in pornographic crime scenes, and includes cybercrimes organized within criminal informal networks. Non-State torture and femicides are perpetrated in pornographic ‘snuff” films.7 Also included in this category are employers who benefit financially when they enslave and non-State torture women and girls they presented as hiring them as domestic labourers.8  

Category 3: Socio-Cultural, Traditional, and Religious-Based Acts and Norms. United Nations experts have declared various forms of violence against women and girls as non-State torture. These include female genital mutilation (FGM); 9 also the misogynistic attacks of acid throwing and burning, forced marriage, and widow rituals.10 However, other forms exist that women and girls suffer such as the ritual of witch hunts that involve non-State torture victimizations.11   

Category 4: Groups and Gangs. This refers to organized criminals, para-military groups, terrorists, cybercriminals, mercenaries, and like-minded others. Reports do use the term “conflict-related” particularly in connection to the crime of sexualized violence including torture when perpetrated by non-State actors.12   

As suggested during the roundtable discussions, a victim-centred approach is the focus of this this working paper. A detailed organized discussion of these four categories will be presented in section 4, sharing with consent women’s voices who speak of non-State torture victimization. It is essential to note that the acts of “classic” non-State torture are perpetrated within all the categories described; this will be evidenced in the women’s and girls’ storytelling.     

3.4 Overcoming Social and Legal Biases Against Women and Girls  

As the “Stop Non-State Torture: Enforcing Human Rights for Everyone” paper described, there exists global discrimination in law, whereby non-State torture is not identified as a crime of torture; this negates the severity of the suffering perpetrated against women and girls. The global discrimination is also socially-based because research from 80 countries and territories, presents evidence that over one quarter of the world’s population hold the misogynistic belief that a man beating his female spouse is justifiable.13 This finding does not identify that the beating of women could rise to the severity of non-State torture victimization. That non-State torture crimes remain discriminatorily unacknowledged relates to its failure to be identified as a torture crime in national law. Such social biased beliefs present “red flag” risk factors.  

When violence against women or girls becomes normalized this can constrain women’s or girls’ efforts to exit or escape, because the development of social support can become difficult to obtain or do not develop. Violence against women that is justifiable can also normalize violent patriarchal patterns which are re-created intergenerationally, including those of non-State torture victimizations. Presenting victim-centred knowledge on the multi-forms of non-State torture committed by non-State actors against women and girls informs States parties of its global occurrence. State parties may then be held accountable for failing in their due diligence to facilitate the protection of women and girls so victimized.14 Researchers suggest that “the primary challenge facing the twenty-first century is to eliminate violence against women and remove the barriers to the development of their strength and creativity and voice” (p. 209).15 It should be noted that this victim-centred working paper is an innovative intervention to this primary challenge.  It takes on a form of due diligence responsibilities to promote a victim-centred approach in law and practice. For example, by explaining and applying the meaning of prevention, protection, investigation, punishment, and reparations to non-State torture victimizations illustrates that:16   

• Prevention requires a State not to act with indifference or with inaction to torture perpetrated against women and girls (children) by non-state actors because taking no action suggests giving a form of agreement, and/or permission or acquiescence for such acts of torture to be inflicted;  

• Protection is upholding the inalienable human right of all peoples including women and girls to be protected in their private and public lives from non-State torture victimizations. Furthermore, Nowak (2010),17 stated for protection to occur “domestic criminal law has to cover all possible cases falling under the definition of torture as stipulated in the Convention” (para. 48); 

• Investigation to be effectively achieved requires that a deficient legal framework must not exist; therefore, non-State torture victimization as a torture crime must exist.    

• Punishment requires that applicable non-State torture law exists so that non-State torturers are held accountable for the offence of non-State torture they perpetrate, otherwise a culture of discrimination and impunity continues.  

• Reparations for women and girls non-State tortured by non-State actors, requires their socio-legal right to name and express in a court of law the non-State torture victimization suffered, to be heard, and never silenced from speaking their truth if applicable reparations are to occur.  

Seeking criminal justice to hold torturers accountable is a fundamental process. It can prevent others from being victimized and assist women and girls process of healing to regain their dignity, worth, and integration into their community and the world. Gaining the socio-legal right to name and express that non-State torture is a crime of torture is endorsed by women and girls. For example, a woman from the U.K. expressed her emotional appreciation of why having non-State torture victimization conversations was important to her. She wrote, “It’s nice to see that someone cares and wants to know about torture.”18  

Or, as drawn and shared by Alex in Figures 2a and 2b, a Canadian woman who fled Canada to gain safety by living in another country. Alex fled to escape her fear that her father, who tortured, trafficked, and threatened to kill her, would do so. Alex’s drawing expresses that she was always for sale—she was the “Garbage Sale”—and had been on sale since infancy. Alex’s drawing verbalises the dehumanizing, objectifying, and commodifying impacts that she says occur when there is no law that acknowledges that a crime of torture was perpetrated against her by non-State actors. Learning that the non-State torture victimization is a human rights violation and a crime is healing.  Because, as Alex described, her father and the other non-State torturers’ modus operandi was to force Alex to believe it was her fault or she was to blame for being non-State tortured, therefore, it was her justifiable “punishment”.19  

 

4. 4.   Defining a Victim-Centred Approach 

 

4.1 United Nations Program “Victims’ Rights First.”  

The Victim’s Rights First program, defines a victim-centred approach.20 It classifies as paramount, to uphold the rights and dignity of the person—of the women or girls—who has been victimized. Inclusive of supporting their well-being and safety, it highlights the following as the program’s major components as:  

1. An enabling environment. This means that persons—women or girls—can speak with the expectation of trust in the system, be listened to, heard, understood, and supported with their needs for safety and confidentiality respected.  

1. Being kept fully informed. When involved in the criminal justice system that persons— women or girls—are kept informed of what is or is not possible, what to expect, to be kept updated, to be involved in decision-making, and to have the opportunities to provide consents to the decisions made. There is also the need for women and girls to be protected from discrimination, stigmatization, retaliation, and re-victimization or re-traumatization.  

1. Maintaining guiding principles. These include that a continuous and reliable service is delivered from the moment persons—women or girls—who has been victimized submit their allegations. That the justice system’s response is empathetic, individualized, non-judgemental, and non-discriminatory is essential.  

Because non-State torture victimizations are rarely criminalized in States parties’ national criminal or penal codes as a torture crime, women or girls non-State torture victimized do not have the legal right to truth-tell. Therefore, women or girls so victimized experience human rights and legal discrimination. They are generally disbelieved, misunderstood, pathologized, and treated with disregard, disrespect, and without a right to human dignity.21 Consequently this victim-centred paper ensures that women’s and girls’ voices of non-State torture victimizations are shared with consent, presented with respect, and with dignity. As expected by a woman “J” from the U.S.A., explains:22  

Women have the right to survive and thrive. We have the right to tell who we chose to tell of our torture and victimization. I felt I was programmed to kill myself if I told anyone. Many perpetrators told me to kill myself such as my father, mother, other relatives, pimps, buyers, strangers, pornographers, professionals, and elected officials both male and female. I was hospitalized for attempting to kill myself via a shotgun but I would not speak to anyone for a week. I was affectively mute. We have the right to justice, right to education, healing modalities, and basic human rights no matter what has happened. Please see survivors as human beings that are capable, intelligent, and contribute much to all of societies at all levels.  

4.2   Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power 

On 29 November 1985, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power.23  Describing that a person—a woman or girl—victimized should be treated with compassion and respect for their dignity even if perpetrators may not be “identified, apprehended, prosecuted, or convicted and regardless of the familial relationship” (para. 2). A person may also become victimized if harmed for helping another person being victimized. This Declaration specifically defines “victims of crime” as persons who (para. 1),   

   

[I]individually or collectively, have suffered harm, including physical or mental injury, emotional suffering, economic loss or substantial impairment of their fundamental rights, through acts or omissions that are in violation of criminal laws operative within Member States, including those laws proscribing criminal abuse of power.”  

 

This Declaration applies the principle of non-discrimination, based on sex for example. This Declaration explains that “abuse of power” involves discriminatory exclusion. It states abuse of power occurs “through acts or omissions that do not yet constitute [emphasis added] violations of national criminal laws but of internationally recognized norms relating to human rights (para. 18). To remedy discriminatory law and policies the Declaration notes that Member States need to act to promote legislative reforms in law, policies, and practices, to address the harms those victimized suffer.  

 

The Declaration explains that it is essential to ensure that all persons—all women or girls—victimized have access to justice and fair treatment. This would include women and girls (children) who suffered non-State torture victimizations. However, based on the research findings of the legal analysis on non-State torture by the NST Working Group, Member States have generally not acknowledged non-State torture as a human rights torture crime within their criminal or penal codes. Consequently, all persons non-State tortured, specifically women and girls (children), continue to experience legal discrimination. They do not have equal access to justice and fair treatment, compensation, and assistance as outlined in this Declaration. 

 

4.3 A Victim-Centred Application of the Declaration   

 

In 1999, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and Centre for International Crime Prevention published an extensive Handbook detailing a victim-centred framework on assisting a person who has been victimized.24 Victimization, as previously explained, refers to criminal acts and to fundamental internationally recognized human rights violations. The Handbook stipulates that legal sanctions are essential to prevent, control, and punish criminal violations. It explains that if a country does not integrate such legal sanctions, perpetrators at all levels of society from parents to multi-institutions, justice and religious systems, and violent groups, gangs, organized networks, and governments have “licence” to inflict multi-harms including torture. The Handbook acknowledges to prevent abuses of power, that interventions depend on identifying the specific type of victimization a person has suffered, acknowledging that torture victimizations generally require torture-informed care. Reference to non-State actors as perpetrators of torture is not directly named in this Handbook.  

 

It needs noting that prior to the release of the Handbook, the following United Nations resolutions were passed acknowledging that all forms of violence perpetrated against women and girls were violations of both their human rights and their legal rights. For example: 

1. 1997: Commission on Human Rights resolution 1997/44 on the elimination of violence against women writes, “to enact or reinforce penal, civil, labour and administrative sanctions in domestic legislation to punish and redress the wrongs done to women and girls subjected to any form of violence, whether in the home, the workplace, the community or society” (para. 2).25 

1. 1998: General Assembly Resolution 52/86 on Crime prevention and criminal justice measures to eliminate violence against women, which requested that “Member States be guided by the Model Strategies and Practical Measures in developing and undertaking strategies and practical measures to eliminate violence against women and in promoting women’s equality within the criminal justice system (para. 10).26  

 

The following major points, A to J, are condensed victim-centred interventions explained in the Handbook. These, according to the Handbook, are needed to assist persons—women or girls—recover from victimization. Non-State torture victimization is not specifically addressed in the Handbook; therefore, this paper integrates the non-State torture storytelling of women to promote and apply the victim-centred approach to non-State torture victimizations. This discussion explains:    

  

1. Abuse of power as occurring when those within the criminal justice system should be expected to act to protect but do not. This failure can contribute to women or girls experiencing responses of increased shock and loneliness. Abuse of power includes, for example, revictimizing attitudes that deny human rights violations occurred, that have policies and practices that offend a woman’s dignity, that are victim-blaming, that dismiss the impact of the crime suffered, and that includes a failure to act to report and protect. When non-State torture criminal violations are not identified it must be realized that abuses of power are repeatedly experienced. Sharing examples of women’s voices or stories of non-State torture victimizations that reflect abuse of power begin with: 

 

Alexandra Lane is from the U.S.A. She was born to a father who tortured and trafficked her to a small group of like-minded torturers within her community, who were all church affiliated. Alexandra explains the dehumanizing impact that abuse of power inflicts when no law on non-State torture exist. She says:27  

 

When society minimizes [torture] . . . it is taken personally . . . and feels like it is me . . . they are looking down on . . . reinforcing the feeling of how the [torturers] minimized my worth when they tortured me . . . Not having the law care enough . . . reinforces what the [torturers] said: ‘No one will believe you. What makes you think you are so special that someone would even want to save you or care about you?’   

1. Participation in the criminal justice system requires ensuring all persons—women or girls—non-State torture victimized have access to a responsive justice system when reporting such a victimizing crime. Women or girls need to be treated with respect and recognition. This includes being protected from harm, ensuring those victimized are involved in ongoing decision-making, informed of their rights and responsibilities including as a witness, and in their legal right to present a non-State torture victim-impact statement. They need to be kept updated on their case developments, in their participation in parole hearings, in other justice seeking frameworks such as issues of compensation, and effective enforcement of restitution. Also discussed was a potential need for ongoing crisis intervention and emotional support that is required: 

 

1. During the pre-trial, the trial, and the post-trial;  

1. If no arrest occurs because it can be perceived as a systems failure;  

1. To process a triggering event that occurs even months or years after being victimized, and  

1. Respecting that a persons’—woman’s or girls’—timeframe of healing is unique and can vary in the lengths of time required.   

 

A Woman from the U.S.A. wrote about the length of time she has worked and still needs to work to heal from non-State torture victimization. She said:28 

 

I read . . . that torture survivors take much longer to heal. This helped me so much! I was wondering why it is taking everything I have, for so long, & why it seems utterly endless . . . because I was not abused, I was tortured! Torture is SO TOUGH. I AM recovering, but it is crucial to call it by its name . . . Thank you . . . it was very validating. After 9 years of full-time . . . therapy, I am making progress! This shows me how far I’ve come I am even more encouraged to do so after filling out this survey. Thank you!  

 

1. Repeated victimizations can result in physical, financial, and psychological injuries, stress responses, and personal and social costs. Dedicated discussion highlights how being victimized can lead to a strong need for sharing victimization stories. However, a silencing of women’s or girls’ suffering can occur, unless she is welcomed to disclose the non-State torture victimizations suffered by being asked. Having experienced repeated victimizations can result in increased vulnerability or it can result in strengthening personal resistance responses, pointing out such responses are individually unique. For instance:  

 

A Woman from Australia shared her responses that contribute to her feelings of vulnerability saying, “The worse thing is that as an adult (37 yrs) I feel no safer and still feel captive – I feel like a corpse without a soul. Some days are better than others, but the ‘battle’ is always within me.”29   

 

1. Safety and security considers physical, emotional, and situational safety and the safety of others if such a danger exists. Situational safety can depend on whether the person—the woman or girl—victimized remains feeling at risk if she (a) sees or hears police interviewing the perpetrator; (b) is interviewed in the same area where she was victimized; (c) is unable to replace torn or lost clothing; (d) is hungry, cold, and is uncomfortable; (e) knows the perpetrator; (f) knows the perpetrator has not been apprehended and has threatened to return, and (g) knows family or friends or witnesses are threatened.  

 

A Woman from the U.S.A. described how prolonged she endured danger when stalked for years saying, “The cruelty that I endured took place from infancy through age 16 when I moved 1500 miles away in order to escape, was STILL followed and stalked for years afterwards even following repeated address and even name changes.”30  

 

1. Ventilation and validation means women or girls non-State torture victimized need to be assured that the form of victimization they suffered is condemned by society and they remain a valued person by society. Allowing survivors to “tell their story” is not easy and they may need to tell it over and over again. This is a healing way of putting the pieces together to understand their victimization and their consequential responses. The pieces of memory fall together over time to build the details of their own story. Ventilation is a way of putting feelings of anger, fear, frustration, guilt, shame, grief, and victimization facts into words and is normal as Hope explained.  

 

Hope, a Canadian woman, shared the importance of being listened to. She described how hard recovering from non-State torture and sexualized human trafficking victimizations were when perpetrated by her father and mother from the earliest of memories. She shared:   

 

I desperately needed someone to listen to what I had to say because the unresolved issues . . . were in my face, holding back my recovery. Previously, every time I tried to discuss this relationship with others I’d be shut down and shut up. I just had to get some of my feelings and thoughts out; I needed to talk about my devastation, my two months of hospitalization with time spent in the quiet room getting my sense of overwhelmingness under control. I had to talk about what it was like returning home, still overcome with trauma, lying there in my bed, curled up into a ball for several months, a towel rolled up between my legs to catch my urine because I couldn’t propel my-Self to even go to the bath room . . . Telling my story is a vital achievement in my healing.31  

 

1. Prediction and preparation are used to assist a woman or a girl to regain their sense of control in their life. They need to know what to do next, to understand their non-State torture victimization responses can come and go at any time, even later in her life. Financial, legal, or medical concerns need clarification. These assist efforts to reorganize or regain their lives prior to the victimization. Regaining her prior life depends on having informed knowledge of the form of victimizing crime and human rights violation a woman or girl was subjected to. It means understanding that if a girl (a child) was born into a non-State torturing and exploitation family system that this was normalized, therefore, they begin to reconstruct a totally new way of reorganizing and gaining their lives. For instance:    

 

Sara, a Canadian woman, explaining some of her normalized childhood of non-State torture-trafficking victimization ordeals said: 

 

My parents rented me when I was just two and all the time. Blindfolded, guns, drugs, hurts. Burned with a propane torch. Raped with knives, gun inside my mouth, middle of my forehead, bum, vagina . . . click, click, click sounds. Soles of your feet hit with sticks [falaka] and placed in cages. Not allowed to eat, kept awake all night being tortured, made to sleep on the floor without bedding . . . so so so much (p. 269).32 

 

1. Protocols for crisis intervention discuss two forms of protocols. The first critical incident stress debriefing model begins by asking the person victimized to try to remember the facts of the victimizing incident. This is to help to tell their story in their own way. Then asked what thoughts occurred during or after the victimization and about her emotional responses. The second protocol is chronological-based. It asks the person to think back in time. Questions ask for descriptions of the crime and of the sensory responses experienced during the victimizing event. However, when a woman or girl is in a non-State torture and exploitation relational family system, it can be impossible for them to respond to either of these protocols. Because their survival responses include survival normalization that prevents their understanding that a crime was committed against them. Plus, for example, re-experiencing overwhelming psychological terror, dissociative responses, and on-going suicidal responses, including as children, experiencing conditional suicidal-femicide responses if they tell.33 Understanding the severity of non-State physical and mental pain inflicted by non-State torturers includes:  

 

A Woman from Portugal describing the acts of non-State torture suffered when exploited into human trafficking. She also shared how she felt when saying she was treated as non-human. She said, I suffered when,34 

 

• Food and drink was withheld
• Chained or handcuffed to a stationary object
• Savagely and repeatedly beaten and kicked

• Hung by the limbs 

• Burnt 

• Cut

• Whipped 

• Tied down naked for prolong periods of time and forced to lie naked on the floor/ground without bedding
• Sat on making breathing difficult 
• Confined to a dark enclosed space, caged, placed in a crate/box and a freezer
• Electric shocked
• Raped by one person and by family/group
• Raped with a weapon (gun or knife) or other objects
• Prevented from using the toilet
• Forced under cold/burning hot water
• Near drowned when held under water 
• Drugged with alcohol and pills 
• Choked
• Suffocated by objects placed over my face
• Pornography pictures taken or snuff films made/used
• Forced to harm others and to watch others being harmed
• Threatened to be killed
• Called derogatory names
• Put down
• Treated as non-human

 

1. Retrospective crisis intervention is meant to provide a person—a woman or girl—the opportunity to ventilate, to be validated, and to be supported as she integrates the victimization ordeal she was subjected to. This may take hours of time for her to tell her victimization story from beginning to end without being prompted. Storytelling needs to be tailored to the unique needs of the woman and can include for example art, drawings, song, poems, or physical activities. For a woman or girl non-State tortured this may take years especially when a system denies that non-State torture victimization crimes exist, for instance:   

 

Sophie, a 17 year-old U.S. youth, tells of non-State torture-trafficking committed by relatives beginning when she was a toddler. She says she was also trafficked out of New York into Czechia at age eight or nine. She explained that when she tried to tell the child-protection system she was told she was lying and sent back to the family perpetrators. Her poem underlines the torturer-traffickers’ modus operandi of their psychological destruction of her personhood.35 

 

They Said 

You are bad   I was bad  This is punishment  We’ll hurt you worse if you tell  You deserve it  I deserve it  Slut  I’m a slut  Whore  I’m a whore  Shut up and suck  Don’t cry  Stay still  You like it

I like it  You wanted it to happen  I wanted it to happen  It’s your fault we’re doing this  It’s my fault  Just TRY and make us stop  You’re nothing but our toy  I’m just a toy  We can do anything we want  Feels good doesn’t it?  Yes sir  We love you Sophie  I love you too

 

1. Post-victimization support was defined in the Handbook as understanding the impact of the present criminal victimization and the person’s consequential responses. Reassuring them of their capability to continue to function while understanding their victimization is painful but with informed support their recovery is possible. Normalizing victimization responses can be beneficial by sharing “teaching stories” of others to help persons realize their responses are similar to that of others. This can assist a person to become Self-aware and accepting of their victimization responses and help with the demanding effort restoring or constructing a new life can demand. This can include developing new health habits, medical and alternative healing interventions to address physical injuries, to reconnect with one’s personal spirituality, to develop safe social networks and relationships, and to revisit the criminal victimization site if wanted. There is also the possibility of a suicidal risk as a way to end the victimization suffering, therefore this risk needs attention.  

 

Adding a present-day situational danger that is not covered in this Handbook is the need to consider whether strangulation victimization occurred. Being strangled can impair decision-making, a result of the lack of oxygen one’s brain. The result is a woman or girl who has been strangled may potentially not be capable of making clear decisions about her safety. If a woman or girl has been strangled this raises an alert of a consequential femicidal risk.36 The more severe the violent victimization suffered, this can result in women‘s elevated suicidality ideation or attempts.37 Non-State torture victimization does cause severe physical and mental pain and suffering. This knowledge is essential when supporting women or girls who have survived non-State torture victimizations as children and or as adults such as Lynn explains:38  

 

Lynn, a Canadian woman, detailed she was groomed by the man she married who, along  with three male partners, organized a secretive plan to hold her captive and who tortured and trafficked her into prostitution. Their established criminal informal network was assisted by 10 policemen, Lynn believed were from two different provincial police departments. Lynn said she was kept trapped by being handcuffed to an iron radiator until she managed to escape after four and one-half years, returning to live with her mother. She described being,39 

 

Horrifically non-State torture victimized and traumatized, I retreated to my bed for about six months. Collapsing . . . Sleeping . . . Not wanting to go out into the world . . . I rode a speeding suicidal roller-coaster. My speeding suicidal roller-coaster included on-again off-again plans for overdosing with pills and alcohol . . . Knowing I loved dogs To-To arrived . . . [my mother] gambled I’d be forced out of bed to attend to his needs. To-To’s unconditional response, his lack of threat to ME is what got me out of bed . . . There were times when I’d plan both To-To and my suicide.40     

 

1. Advocacy is described as providing individual advocacy or as system advocacy. Seeking systematic transformation to prevent, for example, non-State torture crimes from happening in the future would meet the definition of system advocacy. System advocacy offers interdisciplinary connections for all members of society; it offers the opportunity for the development of personal and structural victim-centred knowledge and training, including promoting the systematic adaptation of policies and practices. Listed in the Handbook are systems such as health care and other front-line workers, police, lawyers, judges, probation personnel, spiritual practitioners, landlords, and employers. Staff in embassies, foreign missions, schools, universities, and institutions was also identified as systems of advocacy. A specific suggestion for the media was the need to develop a code of ethics to ensure crimes are reported in a fair and objective manner, maintaining respect for those victimized.  

 

This Handbook noted the important role of NGOs with concerns about women and girls’ (children’s) lives. This NST Working Group has been promoting local to global system advocacy in many ways. The development of these working papers is one example. The NST Working Group members’ efforts relate to system advocacy. By promoting that non-State torture is a human rights crime that needs acknowledgement at the United Nations and States parties’ level that is perpetrated mainly against women and girls. The following interventions are other examples of the NST Working Groups’ system advocacy: 

 

• Civil Society Statement for the United Nations Joint CND & CCPCJ Virtual Event  

• Gender-based violence as a form of torture  

• Statement of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers presented by Evelyn Dürmayer  

• Stop Non-State Torture: Enforce Human Rights for Everyone  

• Walkthrough Non-State Torture (NST) Exhibition   

 

This Handbook included the role of the United Nations, in particular mentioning the UNODC Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme. Presently the United Nations Office in Vienna and UNODC has a programme entitled the “Strategy for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women [2022-2026] that acknowledges gaps in criminal law and procedures.41 UNODC and the Centre for International Crime Prevention did publish this Handbook as well as the following victim-centred resource discussed in the following section 3. Both publications detail the importance of identifying a victim-centred approach and the need to respond in a manner that identifies the specific human rights victimizing crime inflicted. Non-State torture victimizations remain unrecognized and unnamed as a distinct form of violence against women and girls; therefore, this working paper is instrumental in addressing this gap, by sharing knowledge of non-State torture human rights crimes perpetrated against women and girls.  

 

1. Victim-Centred Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice  

5.1   Strengthening Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Responses to Violence against Women  

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in their publication, Strengthening Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Responses to Violence against Women, acknowledges that violence against women is about their human inequality and involves discrimination, abuse of power, and is perpetrated “within and outside the home” (p. 1).42   

 

This publication is a result of the request adopted in December 2010 by the General Assembly.43 The request was that the UNODC broadly disseminate the updated Model Strategies and Practical Measures on the Elimination of Violence against Women in the Field of Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. Member States are urged to evaluate whether their laws, legal principles, procedures, policies, programmes, and practices are effective in preventing and eliminating violence against women and preventing their re-victimizations. Also recommended is for Member States to pay attention to the Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power discussed in section 2.3.  

 

This UNODC publication listed that crime prevention and criminal justice responses include incorporating the following three approaches:  

 

1. A human rights-based approach described obligation as the promotion and protection of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of women and treating them with dignity and respect. The exercise of due diligence within the criminal justice system is stated to include the prevention, protection, and prosecution of all forms of violence perpetrated against women. This publication makes reference to the definition of violence as described in the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, which is:44  

 

The term ‘violence against women’ means any acts of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life (Article 1). 

 

Although a broad list of forms of violence inflicted against woman and girls are mentioned, torture perpetrated against women and girls by non-State actors is not. Neither is torture perpetrated against women or girls by non-State actors mentioned in the UNODC Resource Book for Trainers on Effective Prosecution Responses to Violence against Women and Girls.45 It “notes that evaluating evidence should focus on the credibility of the allegation rather than the credibility of the victim/survivor” (p. 151). However, if torture by non-State actors is globally denied to exist, this automatically places the credibility of women and girls and of their disclosures at risk of being disbelievable. Yet this Declaration, in Article 3 (h) says that women are entitled to equal protection of all human rights including the right not to be subjected to torture. Maintaining the human rights-based approach means putting in place institutional practices that acknowledge non-State torture crimes and ensure that women and girls can effectively submit complaints, if the criminal justice institution fails them. This could be an impossible task when women or girls are struggling to survive and when confronting a legal system that did not acknowledge, criminalize, or understand non-State torture victimizations and the modus operandi of various categories of non-State torturers. For example:  

 

A woman identifying as living in Canada and Europe, explained her relationship with the justice system when attempting to report non-State torture victimization, saying: 

 

I was non-State tortured by a spouse, sometimes I have experienced discrimination . . . or stigmatized by being treated as unworthy . . . labelled after telling a non-offender about the torture. After telling . . . discrimination [is] ongoing because I have not been able to get justice, I’ve been dismissed, I’m not listened to when I share or tell my feelings.46   

 

1. A victim-centred approach was defined as criminal justice systems that prioritize the needs of the woman victimized. This includes acting to protect, assist, and ensure their physical and psychological safety to prevent re-victimization. Also described was that criminal justice systems need to be accountable for criminal justice procedures versus placing responsibilities on the woman victimized. All these issues were similar to those mentioned when critiquing the victim-centred approach reviewed in section 2.3.   

 

Recommended interventions from this UNODC document are reshaped to address women’s human and legal rights not to be subjected to non-State actor torture. The following seven interventions are: 

 

1. To review and, where appropriate, revise, amend or abolish any laws, regulations, policies, practices and customs that are discriminatory in that they do not address non-State torture crimes perpetrated against women and girls;  

1. To safeguard compliance with international human rights obligations, commitments and principles are human rights-based and victim-centred, to ensure all relevant training responds accordingly. It is essential that non-State torture human rights crimes are legally recognized; 

1. To ensure when reports or disclosures of non-State torture victimizations are made by women, that these are received respectfully, with dignity, and maintain a victim-centred approach;  

1. To make sure that data on non-State torture victimizations perpetrated against women respects their confidentiality, human rights, and safety; 

1. To develop and implement relevant human rights and equality-based public awareness and education initiatives, including school curricula designed to prevent non-State torture crimes committed against women and girls (children);  

1. To set up outreach programmes that provide relevant information to women about stereotypes, human rights, and the social, health, legal, and economic aspects of non-State torture to assist them build Self-protection skills and those of their children; 

1. To enhance the ability of criminal justice agencies to share criminal record and other information on non-State torture crimes with each other directly in real time, and to increase investigation outcomes while maintaining required security and human rights safeguards.   

 

1. An offender accountability approach was detailed as taking measures to prevent, investigate, and punish the perpetrators of violence against women, to eliminate offender’s impunity, and to provide victim-centred protection to women. From this perspective the following recommendations are adapted to apply directly to offenders of non-State torture victimizations committed against women and girls (children). These are to: 

 

1. Hold offenders accountable for their acts of non-State torture committed against women and girls (children);  

1. Promote victim and community safety, including by separating non-State torture offenders from those they victimize and from society;  

1. To take into account the life-threatening seriousness of the safety risks, including the vulnerability of women and girls (children) victimized during non-custodial sentencing, the granting of bail, conditional release, parole or probation, especially when dealing with repeat and dangerous offenders of non-State torture crimes;  

1. To develop mechanisms to ensure a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, coordinated, systematic, and sustained response to non-State torture crimes perpetrated against women. This is needed in order to increase the likelihood of successful apprehension, prosecution and conviction of the non-State torturer, to contribute to the well-being and safety of the women and girls (children) victimized, and to prevent secondary or chronic victimizations;  

1. To promote if or where appropriate the rehabilitation of the non-State torture offender, however, women inform us that such offenders never stop perpetrating their crimes;  

1. To ensure the right of the woman victimized to be notified of the offender’s release from detention or imprisonment.  

 

The rule of law is addressed in this publication. It explains that the rule of law is used to govern appropriate oversight and codes of conduct to prevent abuse of power. If violations occur justice officials will be held accountable for any infringement.   

 

1. A Victim-Centered Approach: Women’s Naming of Non-State Torture Victimizations   

6.1 Non-State Torturers Obliterate the Personality of the Girl or Woman Victimized 

The focus of this working paper is developing a model strategy to promote global awareness to end torture crimes when committed by non-State actors, predominately perpetrated against women and girls. To promote deeper victim-centred insights into the destructive impact non-State torturers inflict on the women or girls they torture, we recapture this sentence from the definition of torture established by the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture. It reads (p. 6):47 

Torture shall also be understood to be the use of methods upon a person intended to obliterate the personality of the victim or to diminish his [her] physical or mental capacities . . . . 

Furthermore, the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights reaffirmed,  

That one of the most atrocious violations against human dignity is the act of torture, the result of which destroys the dignity and impairs the capability of victims to continue their lives and their activities (para. 55).48  

To share the obliteration of her relationship with her-Self, Elizabeth Gordon discussed how her mind and body responded to keep her alive when being non-State tortured and trafficked.49 The discussion shared the severity of the obliteration of physical or mental capacities but in the magnificent manner that describes the effectiveness of dissociative survival responses which disconnected her from the severity of torture pain and suffering. She and other women can perceive they were without physicality, without skin, without personhood. Terrified to venture into healing of their loss of personality to reclaim “Who am I?” some women can only do this safely by non-verbal means, choosing instead to draw as also described in section 2.3.  

To share the challenge of integrating a sense of being a person with a whole body with skin, Elizabeth shared the following integration healing moment. Figure 3 drawing is Elizabeth’s dual drawing of her-Self as an intact whole physical person. In the first drawing (a) note her feet and the displacement of her big and little toes; it took Elizabeth Self-reflection time to independently realize her perceptual misplacement of her toes. Then she redrew in (b) her-in-her-body integration with the correct anatomical placement of her toes. 

6.2 International Classifications for Naming Non-State Torture as a Crime 

 

Adhering to the international classifications set in the 2015 UNODC document for naming a form of violence as a crime the following four elements must be met:50 

 

1. The behaviours or actions of the perpetrator(s), 

1. The intentionality of the perpetrator(s),  

1. The person(s) the perpetrator(s) is victimizing, and 

1. The relationship that exists between the perpetrator(s) and the person(s) they victimize. 

 

Addressing this standard is critical to secure placing women’s stories into the creditable context of naming non-State torture victimizations as a crime of torture. These four elements are similar to the findings of the researchers who developed the Depravity Standard.51 Intentions, actions, attitudes, and the choice of those perpetrators’ victimize are described as components of the Depravity Standard. The Depravity Standard was a response to violent crimes that are frequently referred to as cruel, atrocious, heinous, or acts or human evil.52,53     

 

The following women’s storytelling of non-State torture victimization ordeals suffered as children or adults promote clarifying insights and explanations. They are organized in the following paragraphs identified as in section 1.3 under Category 1: Non-State Torture, “classic”; Category 2: Commercial-based non-State torture; Category 3: Socio-cultural, traditional, and religious acts and norms; and Category 4: Groups and Gangs.  

Category 1: Non-State Torture “classic” 

This category introduces and identifies acts of “classic” non-State torture that is perpetrated in relationships, such as within families, or perpetrated by a spouse, a guardian, or peer, for example. To respect both the voices of women who survived non-State torture victimizations and the feedback from the round table expert discussions to include individuals’ stories, ‘L’s story is shared.54 

‘L’s Story. L is from Western Europe. She shared in Figure 4 this photograph of the “bad stick.” It was a weapon, a non-State torture tool, homemade by her grandfather. L explained she could not “really remember a time it wasn’t used” beginning when she was “very young.” She remembers that:  

 

They just changed it - when I [was] really small it was a thinner stick etc. [It] got bigger when I got bigger. Pushed into my bum, that was very bad. They had other tools which cut or burned but I only have memories of these, not the actual things . . . . Rape was always done. Sometimes they would push it in and out . . . would twist it round and round to tear deep in me. Caused a lot of bleeding, not as much as the cutting but still a lot. They liked having sex when I was pouring blood.  

It was awful having to lie [sic] with the stick with nails half in my body and half out and be terrified to move as it would then move inside me and tear . . . . And I was punished if I was found in the morning and it had come out.   

 

L explained that her family told her that the purpose of the “bad stick” was, “to open me up, to make me moist for the men coming, cause I was bad, cause I deserved it, lots of reasons.”55 L detailed she was born into a family system that tortured and trafficked her and this non-State torture tool was just one of the torture weapons used to inflict severe torture-pain and suffering. The intentionality of the non-State torturers is clearly explained, and that they were torturing L and that the relational connections between L and the non-state torturers was family based. L’s story-telling clearly meets the four elements of naming L’s victimization a violent non-State torture crime.  

 

Category 2: Commercial-Based Non-State Torture  

Sara’s Story. Sara is a Canadian. During her disclosures as an adult in her late 20s, she described that her parents began trafficking her when she was two years old.56  She was unclear of the financial benefits they gained but knew they gained pleasure, and gained status or jobs in the community because of the positional power of some buyers. The following is Sara’s description of one non-State torturing-trafficking ordeal. She begins:  

At 14 I was made to go with ‘G”, my dad’s friend…He took me many times. He terrorized you in the car [psychological torture]. He hits you on the side of the head . . . almost knocks you right out the side door. . . [physical tortures]. He would get mad if you cried…choke you until you would almost pass out [strangulation torture] . . . punch you [physical torture] . . . say he would kill you [psychological life-threatening torture].  He would laugh a scary laugh, looks scary in his eyes [psychological torture].  

On the boat [captivity and powerlessness] he would get the shock things out [electric shocking torture], throw you down . . . hit you, make all kinds of bruises with tools like whips, chains, knives and guns [physical tortures]. He blindfolds you so you don’t know what he’s doing [psychological torture]. He sticks a broken bottle in your ribs and sucks the blood [physical torture]. He says ‘smile’ [psychological torture]. He had a big black dog [bestiality]. He gets food . . . does not give it to you, no water either [depravation tortures]. He puts you in a cage [immobilizing torture], throws you overboard . . . drags the cage in the water with the boat. He drowns you [water torture]. He pulls you up, throws you on the deck, rapes you . . . you were supposed to say you wanted more [physical, sexualized and psychological tortures].   

Sara’s story meets the defining elements required to name that the perpetrator inflicted the crime of non-State torture. She clearly described his non-State torture behaviours or actions, his intentions, that she was the person the non-State torturer was victimizing. She clarified that the relationship between her and the non-State torturer was that he was a friend of her father who exploited and trafficked Sara to him “many times.”  

Category 3: Cultural, Traditional and Religious Acts and Norms  

Hannah Koroma’s Story. Hannah’s ordeal was described by author Alexi N. Wood.57 Hannah survived female genital mutilation (FGM) when she was about ten years-of-age and described her victimization of being,   

 

Taken into a dark room, stripped naked, held down by women and grandmother, her screams silenced by a cloth forced into her mouth. Her genitalia cut off with a penknife. Suffering tremendous blood loss and unbearable pain, her suffering did on end. She endured years of severe vaginal infections.  

 

Wood wrote that FGM must not be seen as a cultural rite of passage into womanhood but as the subordination of women, as ongoing severe pain and suffering, and as an act of torture. Hannah’s story does name that FGM was the act intentionality inflicted by women who were non-State actors, and that there existed a relationship between Hannah and the women who inflicted FGM.    

 

That FGM constitutes a form of torture perpetrated by non-State and State actors is discussed by Manfred Nowak, a previous United Nations Special Rapporteur. In his 2008 report he wrote that “if a law authorizes the practice, any act of FGM would amount to torture and the existence of the law by itself would constitute consent or acquiescence by the State” (para. 53).58 A United Nations and World Health Organization interagency statement also addressed that FGM is a human rights violation and is an act of torture violating of United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.59  

 

Category 4: Groups and Gangs  

REDRESS Report. Their report, Not Only the State: Torture by Non-State Actors, listed in Figure 5 the non-State torture behaviours or actions of various de facto regimes and of armed para-military groups.60 The extensive forms of non-State torture these armed para-military forces commit mirror what is described as “classic” State torture methods. The following listing also compares to the behaviours or actions of non-State torturers listed in Category 1 and Category 2: 

REDRESS shared 16 year-old Ugandan youth “M’s” story of non-State torture when abducted and held prisoner by the Lords Resistance Army (LRA). She escaped almost two years later. REDRESS wrote that she described how she: 

[W]as forced to work, was regularly beaten, and suffered repetitive rapes including anal and oral rapes. Forced to physically whip others, dispose of the bodies of those who had been killed or died, and forced to stab a girl to death under threat that she would be killed (p. 26).   

Further to validating the evidence provided by REDRESS and of M’s story, the International Criminal Court on 19 January 2024, addressing the Pre-Trial Chamber II in the case of Joseph Kony, founder and leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), defined it as an organized armed group.61 Under his command children—girls and boys—under age 18 years were abducted. Girls were described as “distributed to LRA commanders and fighters as domestic servants and forced wives” (para. 6) and “predominately subjected to acts of sexual, reproductive, and other gender-based violence” (para. 89). Along with the pregnancies that were a consequence of girls and women being raped, they were enslaved, and tortured. The LRA attacks were described as planned and organized with similar modus operandi. Maintaining control included a violent disciplinary system with “threats of physical violence or death” (para. 15). Included in the detailed descriptions of the atrocities was that “one abductee was forced to kill another abductee with a club and forced to inspect corpses. Another abductee was forced to watch someone being killed” (para. 55).  

In conversation with helpers of those who were non-State tortured by armed para-military groups, the helpers revealed that seldom do they dare disclose the truth of the non-State torture crimes perpetrated in the countries that remain unstable. The risks would be they would be forced from the country and support to those who have survived non-State torture crimes would be lost.62  

It is necessity to now revisit the previously explained need to meet the four elements required for naming a form of violence as a specific crime. These elements were describing the perpetrator’s behaviours, intentionality, the person(s) they victimize, plus their relationship to the person they victimize. Women have named the behaviours of the non-State torturers and the severity of the non-State torture pain suffered. Women have described the perpetrators’ intentionally of the human rights crimes inflicted onto them. Women’s stories have identified that they were victimized and what the relationship was between them and the non-State torturers.   

The UNODC International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes publication explains that using the four descriptive elements required to name a specific crime provides the ability to distinguish one crime from another.63 It also provides the ability to categorize the seriousness of the levels of harms within a specific type of crime and the methods or modus operandi used by the perpetrator in the commission of their criminal act. In the UNODC document, the crime of torture is named as “torture of a person” (p. 95). But it utilizes a State-centric description, thereby discriminatorily limiting the human rights crime of torture to State actors. This emphasises the deepness of the global patriarchal discrimination that “negates torture perpetrated by non-State actors against ‘a person’” (p. 276).64 Non-State torture human right crimes must be named and equally acknowledged to achieve the global victim-centred approach declared in section 4.1 of the Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power, in section 4.2 discussion of the Handbook on Justice for Victims On the Use and Application of the Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power, and in the section 5 discussion on Strengthening Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Responses to Violence against Women.   

1. Due Diligence, Rule of Law, and Ending Non-State Torturers’ Impunity 

7.1 Universal Declaration of Human Rights  

Efforts to prevent 20th century human rights and legal discrimination from continuing into the 21st century began with the making of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted on December 10, 1948. In 2024 this Declaration is available in 562 different translations, and the goal is people will freely translate it, to make it available to everyone in the entire world.65   

Originally the Declaration was named the “Rights of Man” until women activists working on its development succeeded in transforming some of its sexist language including its title.66 For example: 

• Hansa Mehta, from India, achieved replacing the phrase “All men are born free and equal” to what is now Article 1 and worded as “All human beings are born free and equal.”  

• Minerva Bernadino, from the Dominican Republic, pushed for gaining equality of women and men, and  

• Begum Shaista Ikramullah, from Pakistan, pushed for articles and language that emphasized freedom, equality and choice, including for Article 16 on equal rights in marriage as a way to combat child marriage and forced marriage. 

 

Not only were the principles of equality and dignity of all human beings established, so were these human and legal rights. Article 5 states that no one should be tortured; Article 6 declared that all human beings are persons before the law; Article 7 put forth that all human beings are equal before the law and entitled without discrimination to equal protection of the law. And that human rights are to be protected by the rule of law is written into the Preamble. Rule of law can potentially contribute to the hard work of attaining women’s human rights equality.67  

7.2 Global Tribunal on Violations of Women's Human and Legal Rights, 1993 

The rule of law is mentioned briefly in both victim-centred UNODC publications previously discussed in sections 2 and 3. Rule of Law is used as a guiding principle to hold systems and its structures accountable for any abuse of power infringements. From a victim-centred perspective the United Nations system on the rule of law addresses both human and legal rights as,68  

[A]ll persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to laws . . . adherence to . . .  equality before the law, accountability to the law, fairness in the application of the law . . . to protect people’s rights and fundamental freedoms . . . restraining the abuse of power, and to establishing the social contract between people and the state. 

A global failure to uphold the principles of the rule of law to promote non-discriminatory access to justice and to uphold the universality of human rights as women’s rights was voiced with anguish at the Global Tribunal on Violations of Women's Human Rights, held 15 June 1993, at the Austria Centre in Vienna. It is written that although 33 women gave testimonies, they were indeed testifiers for all the violations perpetrated against women and girls on this planet. Stating that, “being female is a risk factor that makes many women vulnerable to routine forms of torture, terrorism, slavery, and abuse that have gone unchecked for too long,” (p. 18) and the testimonials indicated that much of the violations perpetrated against women is done by non-State actors.69 To this Rosa Logar’s testimonial added: 

 

[W]omen . . . escape during the night, without being able to take clothing or any other belongings. If they are lucky they find relatives, friends, or shelters. If they are not they have to return to their torturers . . . They are not abused, tortured or displaced by 'the enemy,' but by their husband, boyfriend, or father. The place where everyone should feel the safest, is the most dangerous . . . (p. 23). 

The Global Tribunal on Violations of Women's Human Rights was held on the second day of the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights. Tribunal planners had eight objectives. All centered on exposing the multitude of oppressions, violations, and victimizations women and girls were subjected to in their private and public lives, in peace and in warring situational environments, including naming torture whether perpetrated by non-State or State actors. Moving forward from the Tribunal into 20 December of the same year,70 gave rise to the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women which states in: 

 

Article 4 [that] States should condemn violence against women and should not invoke any custom, tradition or religious consideration to avoid their obligations with respect to its elimination. States should pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating violence against women and, to this end, should . . . Exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate and, in accordance with national legislation, punish acts of violence against women, whether those acts are perpetrated by the State or by private persons . . .  

 

Article 3 (h) Women are entitled to . . . The right not to be subjected to torture, or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. 

 

As stated in the legal analysis working paper, that the principles of due diligence place an obligation on State parties to protect all persons from being subjected to torture regardless of who the torturers are, non-State or State actors. Additionally, evidence discussed highlights the existence of global States parties’ failure to respect, protect, and fulfil women’s human rights and access to criminal justice when subjected to torture perpetrated by non-State actors. 

 

The 1994/45 United Nations Resolution was: Question of integrating the rights of women into human right mechanisms of the United Nations and the elimination of violence against women. This paragraph reads: 71  

 

Mindful that the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (A/CONF.157/23) adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights, affirmed that gender-based violence and all forms of sexual harassment and exploitation, including those resulting from cultural prejudice and international trafficking, are incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person and must be eliminated . . .  

 

These two words “dignity” and “worth” appeared once in this resolution. Worth and dignity must be applied to the victim-centred voices of the women and girls of this working paper and its victim-centred focus. Women’s voiced testimonials have specifically explained and exposed non-State torture victimizations as both a human rights violation and as a torture crime.  

 

To restate the conclusion of the legal analysis by the working group: 

This analysis stands as a clarion call for action. It urges States, policymakers, civil society, human rights advocates, and international bodies to draw inspiration from the varied approaches presented within the text – a mosaic of legal frameworks that have evolved to confront the stark reality of non-State torture. It beckons them to amplify their efforts, recognizing the imperative to reshape their legal frameworks. This paper envisions a future where the protection of human dignity is not just reactive but anticipatory. The expectation for the near future could begin with the establishment of a ‘Declaration to Eliminate Non-State Torture’ as a victim-centred tangible global strategy.            

 

Women’s remaining question is:  

Has sharing their voices as women or girls presented the victim-centred evidence necessary for them to gain law, policies, practices, and protection by all of society so that the many forms of torture perpetrated by non-State actors becomes a human rights non-State torture crime, to end non-State torturers’ impunity, and to eventually eliminate all non-State torture victimizations of women and girls? 

 

06 Sep, 2024