A/64/215 Corporal punishment 71. The jurisprudence of international and regional human rights mechanisms has long held that corporal punishment, whether ordered as punishment for a crime or administered as an educative or disciplinary measure, is contrary to the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. 32 Both the Beijing and the Havana Rules explicitly outlaw corporal punishment on juvenile detainees. Rule 67 of the latter furthermore specifies that placement in a dark cell or in closed or solitary confinement, any other punishment that may compromise the physical or mental health of the juvenile, the reduction of diet, the restriction or denial of contact with family members, labour as a disciplinary sanction and collective punishment shall be prohibited. 72. In some countries, however, national laws explicitly allow the beating or caning of young offenders as a disciplinary measure. 33 Even in countries where corporal punishment is prohibited by law, it is often administered on persons deprived of their liberty, particularly on children and often for minor misbehaviours. In some of the special juvenile detention institutions visited, corporal punishment appeared to be a routine practice. The prison authorities of those facilities sometimes openly admitted the regular use of corporal punishment for disciplinary purposes in cases of disobedience, e.g., in facilities in Indonesia and Togo. 73. Methods of corporal punishment reported to the Special Rapporteur in countries such as Indonesia, Togo and Uruguay included stress positions, such as being forced to crouch for one or more hours with bent knees and arms sprawled out; handcuffing to beds for a prolonged period of time; slaps on the head or in the face and beatings with bare hands or instruments, such as truncheons; administering a certain number of strokes with a wooden baton on backs or buttocks; and suspension from window bars. As a means of intimidation, those sanctions were often applied in the presence of other children. Abuse by fellow detainees 74. A significant part of the abuse of child detainees is inflicted by other detainees, mainly by adults but also by other children. The forms of abuse can be verbal and psychological but also physical, including rape. Reasons for inter-prisoner violence can be competition for scarce resources or factual delegation of powers to privileged detainees by the authorities. It is the duty of the State to protect detainees, particularly members of vulnerable groups, such as children, from any aggression by their fellow detainees. Without any protection from the State, child detainees find themselves at the bottom of the internal pecking order, prone to exploitation by others. 75. A safeguard against the abuse of children by adult detainees is their separation during detention, which finds its legal reflection in numerous hard and soft law __________________ 32 33 09-43792 See A/60/316, paras. 18-28; see also Committee on the Rights of the Child, general comment No. 8 (2006). For example, the Nigerian Criminal Code, which in section 295 justifies “a blow or other force” for the correction of children, servants and others: A/HRC/7/3/Add.4, para. 57. The Committee on the Rights of the Child, when considering the report of Saudi Arabia, expressed concern that persons under 18 may be subject while in detention to corporal punishment, such as flogging, under article 28 of the 1977 Detention and Imprisonment Regulations: CRC/C/15/Add.148, paras. 33 and 34. 21