A/HRC/28/68 3. Vulnerability of children and the threshold for torture and other ill-treatment 32. Children are particularly vulnerable to certain human rights violations, including torture and other forms of ill-treatment. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, in its article 37 (c), establishes the obligation to take into account the age-specific needs of children. The Human Rights Committee, the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, have also recognized the need for States to provide special measures or heightened “due diligence” to protect the personal liberty and security of every child. 5 33. Children experience pain and suffering differently to adults owing to their physical and emotional development and their specific needs. In children, ll-treatment may cause even greater or irreversible damage than for adults. 6 Moreover, healthy development can be derailed by excessive or prolonged activation of stress response systems in the body, with damaging long-term effects on learning, behaviour and health. A number of studies have shown that, regardless of the conditions in which children are held, detention has a profound and negative impact on child health and development. Even very short periods of detention can undermine the child’s psychological and physical well-being and compromise cognitive development. Children held in detention are at risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, and may exhibit such symptoms as insomnia, nightmares and bed-wetting. Feelings of hopelessness and frustration can be manifested in acts of violence against themselves or others. Reports on the effect of detention on children have found higher rates of suicide, suicide attempts and self-harm, mental disorder and developmental problems, including severe attachment disorder. 7 The threshold at which treatment or punishment may be classified as torture or ill-treatment is therefore lower in the case of children, and in particular in the case of children deprived of their liberty. B. Torture and other ill-treatment of children deprived of their liberty in law and in practice 1. Children in conflict with the law 34. International standards require the establishment of a minimum age of criminal responsibility that reflects when a child has the adequate mental capacity and moral 5 6 7 Human Rights Committee, general comments No. 17, para. 1 and No. 35, para. 62; European Court of Human Rights, Z and Others v. United Kingdom, paras. 74-75; Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Gonzales v. USA, final observations, 24 March 2008, pp. 64-67;. See for example Anthony Lake and Margaret Chan, Putting science into practice for early child development, UNICEF, New York and WHO Geneva, 20 September 2014; and Michael D. De Bellis et al., “Developmental Traumatology Part II: Brain Development”, Biological Psychiatry, vol. 14, No. 10 (15 May 1999), pp. 1271-1284. See The heart of the nation’s existence: a review of reports on the treatment of children in Australian detention centres, ChilOut, 2002, appendix E, Michael Dudley and Bijou Blick; Sarah Mares and Jon Jureidini, “Psychiatric assessment of children and families in immigration detention – clinical, administrative and ethical issues”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, vol. 28, No. 6 (2004) pp. 520526; Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, “A last resort? National Enquiry into Children in Immigration Detention”, April 2004; Zachary Steel et al., “The politics of exclusion and denial: the mental health costs of Australia’s refugee policy”, 12 May 2003, p. 10. 7