E/CN.4/1997/7 page 5 the relationship of the practice to the mandate of the Special Rapporteur. Accordingly, the following paragraphs aim to address the matter. 5. The Special Rapporteur throughout his tenure has received substantial information on the practice of corporal punishment in a number of countries. The information pertains to a variety of methods of punishment, including flagellation, stoning, amputation of ears, fingers, toes or limbs, and branding or tattooing. With respect to the practice in some countries, the authority for the imposition and execution of the punishment derives from legislation or executive decree having the force of legislation. The legal provisions in question envisage the infliction of corporal punishment as an ordinary criminal sanction, either alternative to or in combination with other sanctions such as fine or imprisonment. In some countries the provisions are to be found in administrative regulation, such as that contained in prison manuals in respect of disciplinary offences. In other instances, informal or quasi-official agencies, such as ad hoc village tribunals or religious courts, have pronounced sentences of corporal punishment which appear to be extrinsic to the State's constitutional criminal justice system. In respect of these latter cases, the State must be considered responsible for the consequences of these sentences, if they are carried out with its authorization, consent or acquiescence. 6. The Special Rapporteur takes the view that corporal punishment is inconsistent with the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment enshrined, inter alia , in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Being Subjected to Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Accordingly, the Special Rapporteur has made a number of urgent appeals on behalf of persons who had been sentenced to corporal punishment, requesting that the concerned Government not carry out the sentence. He has also brought to the attention of a number of Governments information he received on the general practice of corporal punishment in their respective countries, as well as individual cases in respect of which such punishment had been carried out. 7. The Special Rapporteur is aware of the view held by a small number of Governments and legal experts that corporal punishment should not be considered to constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, within the meaning of the obligation of States under international law to refrain from such conduct. Some proponents of the proposition that corporal punishment is not necessarily a form of torture argue that support for their position may be found in article 1 of the Convention against Torture, wherein torture is defined for the purposes of the Convention. That definition excludes from the ambit of proscribed acts those resulting in “pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions”. Thus, the argument proceeds, if corporal punishment is duly prescribed under its national law, a State carrying out such punishment cannot be considered to be in breach of its international obligations to desist from torture.