A/72/178 suffering inflicted, but rather the purpose of the conduct, the intention of the perpetrator and the powerlessness of the victim” ( A/HRC/13/39, para. 60). 41 Indeed, “all purposes listed in Article 1 CAT, as well as the TP [travaux préparatoires] of the Declaration and the Convention, refer to a situation where the victim of torture is a detainee or a person ‘at least under the factual power or control of the person inflicting the pain or suffering’, and where the perpetrator uses this unequal and powerful situation to achieve a certain effect, such as the extraction of information, intimidation, or punishment”. 42 31. Building and further elaborating on these observations, the Special Rapporteur concludes that it is the deliberate instrumentalization of the pain or suffering inflicted on a powerless person as a vehicle for achieving a particular purpose, even if exclusively for the sadistic gratification of the perpetrator, which is the essence of torture. For the purposes of the present report, “powerlessness” means that someone is overpowered, in other words, has come under the direct physical or equivalent control of the perpetrator and has lost the capacity to resist or escape the infliction of pain or suffering. Even though the text of article 1 of the Convention against Torture suggests that the range of purposes capable of qualifying an act as torture is limited, the specifically listed purposes — interrogation, punishment, intimidation, coercion or discrimination of any kind — are phrased so broadly that it is difficult to envisage a realistic scenario of purposeful ill-treatment against a powerless person that would escape the definition of torture. As a matter of generic concept, therefore, the definition of torture does not necessarily depend on the precise purpose or intensity of the inflicted pain or suffering, but on the intentionality and purposefulness of that infliction in conjunction with the powerlessness of the victim. 32. Thus, while torture always requires the intentional and purposeful infliction of pain or suffering on a powerless person, other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment can also comprise the infliction of pain or suffering without deliberate intention (for example, as an expected or unexpected incidental effect) or without instrumentalizing such pain and suffering for a particular purpose, and can include the unnecessary, excessive or otherwise unlawful use of force against persons who are not powerless, for example, in situations of self -defence, arrest or crowd control. 43 The transition from “other” cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment to torture is illustrated in Corumbiara v. Brazil, in which the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights first noted that “the police used excessive, unnecessary, and disproportionate force against the workers, thereby injuring over fifty of them” and then pointed out that “after bringing the situation entirely under control, the State agents submitted the workers to beatings, humiliation, and inhuman and degrading treatment”, concluding that, once Brazil had “gained full control of the situation”, its use of force agains t the workers amounted to torture. 44 33. In sum, in the view of the Special Rapporteur, while the notion of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment includes essentially any unlawful __________________ 41 42 43 44 17-12326 See also Manfred Nowak and Elizabeth McArthur, The United Nations Convention against Torture: a Commentary (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 76-77. Manfred Nowak, “What practices constitute torture? US and UN standards”, Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 28, No. 4 (November 2006), p. 832, citing J. Herman Burgers and Hans Danelius, The United Nations Convention against Torture: a Handbook on the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Leiden, Martinus Nijhoff, 1988), p. 120. See also Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, art. 7 (2) (e). Nowak and McArthur, The United Nations Convention against Torture: a Commentary, p. 558. See also E/CN.4/2006/6, para. 38. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, report No. 32/04, case 11.556, “Corumbiara v. Brazil, Merits, 11 March 2004”, paras. 226 and 228. 13/24