ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the literature in touching upon questions of the meaning, impact and wrongness of torture, cruel, and inhuman treatment. It draws out implications of the interpretation of degrading treatment for understanding the broader right. The chapter argues that the interpretation of each element should sit coherently within the conceptual umbrella of the right, and that a richer understanding of each element leads to a richer understanding of the interpretive scope of the whole. The EComHR case-law foregrounds another element that is useful for understanding cruel and inhuman treatment – indifference. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has commonly linked inhuman treatment to experiences of physical violence, but its early cases also arrived at findings of inhuman treatment in contexts that seem to specifically condemn an attitude of indifference on the part of state agents. This category of case is the second largest in terms of number of findings of inhuman treatment after physical violence.
