Abstract
The contemporary global struggle against torture began in 1973 at a conference organised by Amnesty International. Almost a decade later the organisation now known as DIGNITY—Danish Institute Against Torture was founded as the first Centre set up to treat and rehabilitate victims of torture. This chapter builds on interviews with six members of DIGNITY staff. Their narratives draw on a rich and multi-textured set of experiences working to prevent torture in various parts of the world. The chapter does not endeavour to paint an organisational history. Rather, the aim is more modest, namely to draw out some central pivotal themes and consider the relationship between personal and institutional reflexivity.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
In the first version of this paper some space was given over to consideration of an additional theme, namely whether there is a price to pay for individuals engaged in anti-torture work. The consensus was basically that costs, if existent were minimal or worth it and could not be compared to the price paid by activists on the front-line. Despite what seemed like a reasonable hypothesis to me—that the fight against torture might leave its warriors marked in some way—interviewees were having none, or very little, of this.
- 2.
Janis and Noyes (2006) quote, for example, a much-cited appeals court judgement (in the case of Filartiga v. Pena-Irala) which stated how ‘the torturer has become, like the pirate and the slave trader before him, hostis humani generis, an enemy of all mankind.’ Further, Peter Kooijmans, the special rapporteur on torture writing in 1986 put it this way: ‘Torture is now absolutely and without any reservation prohibited under international law whether in time of peace or war. In all human rights instruments the prohibition of torture belongs to the group of rights from which no derogation can be made… If ever a phenomenon was outlawed unreservedly and unequivocally it is torture.’ (Kooijmans 1986).
References
Allen, John (2011) ‘Powerful Assemblages?’, Area Vol. 43(2): 154–157.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (2000) Pascalian Meditations, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Canning, V. (2016) ‘Unsilencing Sexual Torture: Responses to Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Denmark’, British Journal of Criminology 6 (3): 438–455.
Douglas, M. (1986) How Institutions Think, New York: Syracuse University Press.
Emirbayer, M. and Williams, E. M. (2005) ‘Bourdieu and Social Work’, Social Service Review vol. 79(4): 689–724.
Holland, D. and Lave, J. (2001) History in Person. Enduring Struggles, Contentious Practice, Intimate Identities, Santa Fe, NM/Oxford: SAR Press, James Currey.
Janis, M. and Noyes, J. (2006) International Law: Cases and Commentary, 3rd edn., New York: West Publishing.
Jefferson, A. M. (2014) The Situated Production of Legitimacy: Perspectives from the Global South. In J. Tankebe and A. Liebling (Eds.) Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: An International Exploration, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jefferson, A. M. and Gaborit, L. S. (2015) Human Rights in Prisons: Comparing Institutional Encounters in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and the Philippines, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Jefferson, A. M. and Huniche, L. (2009) ‘(Re)Searching for Persons in Practice: Field- Based Methods for Critical Psychological Practice Research’, Qualitative Research in Psychology 6 (1 and 2): 12–27.
Kelly, T., Jensen, S., Anderson, M. K., Christiansen, C., Sharma, J. R. (forthcoming) ‘Torture and Ill-treatment Under Perceived Human Rights Documentation and the Poor’, Human Rights Quarterly (accepted 18 March 2016).
Kooijmans, P. (1986) Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Research Report, UN Special Rapporteur UN DOC E/CN.4/1986/15.
Lave, J. (2011) Apprenticeship in Critical Ethnographic Practice, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jefferson, A.M. (2017). Situated Perspectives on the Global Fight Against Torture. In: Armstrong, S., Blaustein, J., Henry, A. (eds) Reflexivity and Criminal Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54642-5_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54642-5_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-54641-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-54642-5
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)