Introduction 1. The Phenomenon of Torture 2. Drafting History, Entry into Force, and Status of Ratification of the Convention and Protocol 3. Content and Significance of the Convention and Protocol 4. Rules of Interpretation 5. Reservations, Declarations of Interpretation, and Denunciation of the Convention and Protocol 1 3 6 10 11 1.  The Phenomenon of Torture Torture constitutes a direct and deliberate attack on the core of the human personality and dignity. As slavery, it aims at depriving human beings of their humanity. Slavery is defined in Article 1 of the Slavery Convention of 1926 as ‘the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised’. While slavery deprives the victim ex lege of his or her status as a human being by allowing the slave owner to exercise unrestricted legal power over the victim, torture describes a situation in which one person exercises unrestricted factual power over another person. Slavery and torture, as the two most extreme forms of dehumanizing human beings by depriving them of human dignity, have more in common than one would expect at the outset. In ancient Greek and Roman times, for example, witness testimony of slaves in civil or criminal proceedings was only admitted if confirmed under torture. This relationship between slavery, torture, and the right to human dignity is best expressed in Article 5 of the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR).1 The powerlessness of the victim, which in our opinion constitutes one of the essential definitional criteria of torture,2 is illustrated by many of the typical methods of torture, including short-​shackling, suspension in painful positions such as ‘strapado’ or ‘Palestinian hanging’, stripping victims naked and subjecting them to various forms of beatings, electric shocks, rape, and other sexual assaults, repeated immersion into water while being fixed on a board (‘water boarding’) or into a mixture of blood, urine, vomit, and excrement (‘submarino’), simulated executions or amputations. Such a situation of absolute power and control over the victim usually means that the victim is detained and held behind closed doors. If the victim is held incommunicado in a secret place of detention, without any contact with the outside world, the feeling of being isolated, frightened, powerless, and subject to the unrestricted power of the torturer is indeed most extreme. Torture aims at breaking the will of the victim in order to achieve a certain purpose, such as extracting a confession or other relevant information. 1   Art 5 ACHPR reads as follows:  ‘Every individual shall have the right to the respect of the dignity inherent in a human being and to the recognition of his legal status. All forms of exploitation and degradation of man particularly slavery, slave trade, torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment and treatment shall be prohibited.’ 2   See below Art 1, §§ 114–​21.