Union’s credibility in the world that it should not apply double standards in external and internal policy.”6 International Law on Torture There is perhaps no more basic prohibition in international law than the ban on torture. In the aftermath of the horrors of World War II, the community of nations unequivocally repudiated torture. The 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights share the injunction that “No one shall be subjected to torture, or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”7 The 1949 Geneva Conventions setting out the laws of war prohibit torture and ill-treatment of all combatants, prisoners of war and civilians, in all circumstances of international and non-international armed conflict.8 Article 3, common to all of the Geneva Conventions, prohibits “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture,” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”9 The 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Convention against Torture), the most detailed expression of the international community’s censure, defines torture as: any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at 6 European Parliament Resolution, Situation of fundamental rights in the European Union 2004-2008, January 14, 2009, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&reference=P6-TA-2009-0019&language=EN&ring=A6-2008-0479 (accessed March 17, 2010), para.22. 7 Universal Declaration on Human Rights, article 5; European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), article 3. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which entered into force in 1976, uses the same language in its article 7. 8 The Third Geneva Convention states that “Prisoners of war must at all times be treated humanely. Any unlawful act or omission by the Detaining Power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody is prohibited, and shall be regarded as a serious breach of the present Convention” (Article 13) and provides that “No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatsoever” (Article 17). Convention (III) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva, August 12, 1949. 9 Geneva Conventions, common article 3. 7 Human Rights Watch | June 2010