Abstract

Excerpted From: Sondra S. Crosby, How Torture Became Part of Health Law, 50 American Journal of Law & Medicine 265 (2024) (116 Footnotes) (Full Document)

I remember the precise moment I met Dr. Michael Grodin in the Department of Health Law, Ethics, and Human Rights at the Boston University School of Public Health BUSPH. It was the spring of 2001 when I was a junior faculty member and primary care doctor. My colleague Dr. Alejandro Moreno introduced us when he learned I was interested in Human Rights but had not found real direction or a mentor. Within minutes of meeting Dr. Grodin, he gave me a book to read: Health and Human Rights in a Changing World(which he had co-edited). Then he pulled a crumpled paper from his pocket containing an illegible running list of about twenty projects I could start on as soon as possible. At that moment I knew I had found a home. My career launched with new inspiration under the mentorship of Dr. Grodin and the Center for Health Law, Ethics, and Human Rights.

Dr. Grodin introduced me to the complexities of working with survivors of torture, which became a focus of my career. I learned how health, medicine, and law are inextricably linked and have practiced in this area over the last twenty-three years.

Torture, a horrific, degrading experience, is prohibited by international law. In 1948, Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” This prohibition is repeated in Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other legally binding human rights conventions, essentially making all nations bound by international law to refrain from torture. In 2012, the International Court of Justice in The Hague affirmed the prohibition on torture as part of customary international law. All nations that are bound by the 1984 U.N. Convention Against Torture (CAT) are required to make torture a crime under domestic law. The U.S. signed the CAT in 1988, and the Senate ratified it in 1994 with reservations clarifying that the Convention is interpreted in line with the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution, and does not restrict the United States from applying the death penalty.

The 1984 Convention Against Torture defines it as:

... any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity ....”

Despite its universal prohibition, torture still occurs around the world, with evolving methods causing untold harm to individuals, communities, and societies. Torture intersects with health law in many ways, and this paper will explore our work at CLER, alongside my personal experiences and reflections.

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I have now been documenting torture and treating survivors for close to twenty-five years. I have learned and evolved during my time at the CLER. I have seen unimaginable forms of torture. I have met survivors from every walk of life- each with a personal and powerful story to which I am privileged to bear witness. I am humbled daily by the resilience of these survivors. Racism plays a monumental role in justifying and perpetuating torture- dehumanization of Black and Brown bodies to maintain White supremacy is a recurring theme in the United States from slavery to mass incarceration and capital punishment to treatment of refugees. It is a fact that human rights work is exhausting, slow, and takes grinding perseverance. The problem of torture is a behemoth one, yet should not be written off as too difficult to deal with or someone else's responsibility. Even if you cannot make things right, it is possible to make things better, in small, incremental steps.