Ergun Cakal

Recognising (and resisting) psychological suffering in adjudicating torture’s prohibition

Psychological suffering, when singled out, has not been specifically qualified as torture in international human rights adjudication. Whilst cases of prolonged solitary confinement, irreducible life imprisonment and threats have come to be variably viewed as inhuman or degrading treatment, the specific qualification of torture is yet to be associated with these and related practices by authoritative adjudicators at the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the UN Committee Against Torture. This research asks: why has this been the case? What have been the conditions and considerations for actors at these institutions to arrive at this common position? Through a comprehensive and comparative review of the case-law coupled with 78 semi-structured interviews, this research explores and explicates the individual and institutional factors that have shaped the adjudication of psychological suffering. New understandings are presented of views, experiences, practices, competencies and positionalities bearing on these interpretive practices. The research finds that, whilst there is a principled acceptance that psychological suffering is no less harmful than physical suffering, this fails to be fully realised in practice primarily due to political, perceptual and processual  factors pertaining to assessing the gravity of psychological suffering.