This chapter begins with the history of the international recognition of terrorism as a crime, including through the adoption of global and regional counter-terrorism treaties, and United Nations (UN) Security Council resolutions. The chapter then turns to a discussion of the challenges associated with defining terrorism, including its material and mental elements, and with national prosecutions. The chapter also explores terrorism as a war crime, a crime against humanity, and a crime under customary international law. The chapter’s consideration of torture begins with the definition found in the UN Convention Against Torture, and considers the obligation to prosecute or extradite (aut dedere aut judicare) under that treaty. It also discusses torture as an international crime under the ICC Statute and other statutes of international criminal tribunals. The chapter ends with an examination of ecocide as an emerging crime.

The significance of emotions is often implicitly addressed in norm research. Some International Relations (IR) scholars, for example, suggest a regulatory function of emotions when it comes to norm-based behaviour, norm compliance, norm persuasion, and norm contestation. Yet, the literature on norms often takes these affective dynamics for granted without making them explicit. This contribution seeks to address this imbalance by examining the relationship between emotions (as moral value judgements) and norms (as collective expectations about appropriate behaviour). Specifically, we extend the current analytical focus by proposing a framework for the empirical investigation of emotional resonance in norm research. We argue that emotional resonance is crucial to the impact and enforcement of international norms because emotions assign specific value to norms within normative orders. We identify pathways and build bridges between norm research and research on emotions in IR and develop a theoretical model to show how emotional resonance is helpful for explaining failures of norm compliance. The way in which the absence of emotional resonance facilitates non-compliance is illustrated by the example of the Bush administration’s reaction to torture allegations in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Under what conditions can we expect international courts to be progressive? The introduction begins with a discussion of why it is compelling to answer this question by looking at the case of the European Court of Human Rights – a court that is not unambiguously progressive. It then lays out the theoretical and empirical foundations of the book, presenting the key concepts of forbearance and audacity – strategies that courts employ to adjust their sovereignty costs while maintaining a good institutional reputation. The theoretical framework explains why the Court needs to oscillate between forbearance and audacity, and how this oscillation has shaped the norm against torture and inhuman or degrading treatment. The empirical analysis, in its turn, combines social science methods and legal analysis to reveal the extent to which the Court has resorted to forbearance and audacity when interpreting the norm against torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, and how such episodes influenced the norm’s developmental trajectory. The introduction concludes by explaining the determinants of forbearance and audacity and putting forth the book’s key contributions to the existing debates.

Chapter 6 examines the ways in which reformers and certain colonial agents were engaging with deindustrialization as an anomalous societal calamity. Many believed that prejudicial tariffs had resulted in the country’s exclusion from a system of “real” free trade, which in turn contributed to the near-collapse of the native handloom-weaving sector. Following initiatives first devised by the Bombay administration – which the Government of India quickly overruled – reformers hoped to stimulate alternative industries such as the cultivation and refinement of free-labor sugarcane. To provide immiserated weavers with agricultural employment on “fair” terms, they further advocated for radical tax reductions, challenged the state’s claim to be sole proprietor of all Indian lands, and publicly revealed its torturous revenue extraction practices. Reformers thereby held that mass poverty in a land as fecund as India could only be the result of European avarice and artificial constraints that inhibited trade.

Introducing internment in August 1971 broke ancient prohibitions against detention without trial and forcible confessions, and incited a fervent reaction across Northern Ireland. Rather than viewing internment in isolation, this chapter evaluates the implications of Prime Minister Heath granting the army permission to wage war against the IRA. The wartime mindset began to take hold because initial operations appeared to be successful. Even as the Provisionals escalated their violence, soldiers retained some sympathy for the Catholic population, and thought of their own approach as discriminate. An arms amnesty, searches and arrests provided plentiful statistical evidence to feed the optimistic mood. Improvements to the military intelligence system gave credence to General Tuzo’s wish for gradual, low-key attrition of the IRA, especially targeting the Provisional leadership. This chapter argues the turn towards repression built slowly, and derived as much from the nature of British common law, Britain’s global commitments and London’s calculations about blame politics, as it did from fears of a loyalist backlash. The growing hurt done to those adjacent to the targets of the military failed to register as meaningful enough to force any major re-think in strategy.

This interview offers Iqbal Khan’s directorial perspective on his influential production of Othello (2015). The casting of Hugh Quarshie as Othello and Lucian Msamati as Iago made Othello a play more about intra-racial than inter-racial relations. However, Khan explains how the inclusion of references to the torture of prisoners of war by the allied forces during the Iraq War helped him highlight the ways in which Othello is more than a play about its protagonist’s doubt about his place as a person of colour in a world dominated by people with different traditions that exclude him. According to Khan, the play is equally (if not more) invested in exploring the nature of Othello’s work and the nature of his experience as the leader of mercenary forces. Besides, as Khan points out, the questions that haunt Othello haunt all of us. Some of these questions – including what makes up one’s systems of loyalty, what makes up one’s systems of justice and judgement, or whom one is accountable to – are especially problematic at times of war, because they often reveal a slippage between lack of control (and victimhood) and abuse of power (and complicity).

The fourth chapter examines the depiction of torture in the Decameron. Boccaccio was fascinated by torture from both an epistemological and narratological standpoint. The greatest storyteller of the Middle Ages could not ignore the enticements of omniscience and narrative closure it proffers. The chapter argue specifically that Boccaccio saw a parallel between plot and due process, on the one hand, and torture and dénouement, on the other. What does torture tell us about the sense of an ending? The torture of Martellino by the sadistic Trevisan judge (2.1) is played as farce. In the tale of Zinevra-Sicruano (2.9), torture provides a happy ending within the fantasy world of romance. In the novella of Tedaldo (3.7), the romance of torture is domesticated by due process and the contingency of the novella form. Respect for due process and plot are abandoned in controversial final novella of the Decameron, the story of Griselda (10.10). After years of imposing unimaginable suffering on his young bride, Gualtieri finally gets his happy ending—but one that makes us question the nature of all endings.

This chapter discusses the process leading up to, during, and after the execution of the three perpetrators of the Dongo killings. Information about the preparations which took place during the few days between the sentencing and the executions comes from a final accounting of the costs of the trial process. Lucero and other court officials made a special point of acknowledging the difficult work accomplished by a number of people over the course of the two weeks between the crime and the execution. Many worked through “sleepless nights” on this “anguishing process.”

In 2005, voters in Zimbabwe performed their civic duty in the seventh election since 1980. The preceding three years were crucial to understanding the 2005 election. Many sources of violence existed in this intervening time, influenced by the referendum vendetta, the continuing land reform process, and the apparent bitterness engendered by the 2000 and 2002 election outcomes. It was crystal clear that Zanu PF’s first weapon of choice in elections was stick rather than carrot. Zanu PF viewed MDC voters as minors and Western stooges and its own supporters as adults of unquestionable loyalty and obedience. State patronage and state-sponsored violence had always taken centre stage before, during and after elections. The violent May 2005 Operation Murambatsvina was a largely state-sponsored campaign (with support from some businesses) to stifle dissent and independent economic and political activity in the country’s urban areas. The main victims of Murambatsvina were younger and unemployed, whom state security agents saw as potential recruits for social unrest. The extent of Zimbabwe’s poor human rights record was exposed by new information technology and increased reporting. As Zimbabwe prepared for the 31 March 2005 parliamentary election, Zanu PF’s campaign was decidedly violent and anti-Western.

On 29 March 2008, Zimbabwe’s ninth poll took place. Zanu PF felt insecure being in power, legitimised by only 47 and 19.5 per cent in the 2005 parliamentary and senate election, respectively. Following changes to the Constitution of Zimbabwe in September 2007, the electorate was asked to vote for a set of four political representatives for: president, parliament, senate and local government council. The 2008 socio-economic contexts showed that the electoral playing field and election processes and outcomes echoed excesses of previous flawed elections. The 29 March and 27 June 2008 elections were critical watershed moments in that while the March elections were the most peaceful (and even enjoyable) since the genesis of Zimbabwe’s mega-crisis in 2000, the June run-off will go down in history as the bloodiest since independence. The pre-poll arena for the harmonised elections had hallmarks of a rigged election, especially the use of state-financed patronage, poor voter education, the decrepit state of the voters’ roll and the violent pronouncements by members of the military-security sector, all of which skewed the playing field in favour of the incumbent regime.

The Unity Accord sealed between Mugabe and Nkomo and their supporters in 1987 not only drastically reduced violence against the Ndebele, but it also ended dissident activity generating a totally different election framework in the 1990 elections. Twenty seats reserved for whites were abolished. In 1989, Edgar Tekere, a former Zanu PF party stalwart disenchanted by Mugabe’s leadership style formed the urban-based Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM). ZUM and independent candidates from within Zanu PF were not evidence of a gradual decline in elite cohesion. Zanu PF’s political stranglehold in the country directed violence at civil society. Pent-up intolerance of political opposition draped in a dictatorship outfit replaced ethnic conflict in driving violence. From the dominant power politics analysis, a social narrative approach shows the resilience of ethnicity, nationalism, loyalty, legitimacy and unity as explanatory factors for violence. However, Zanu PF also used paramilitary organisations to maintain or regain control and the abuse of legislative and judicial powers to stay in power. The 1990 general elections took place from 28 to 30 March, with many unresolved teething problems, including persistent division and weakness in the opposition. Five parties competed in the election; ZUM, the UANC, NDU, Zanu-Ndonga and Zanu PF.

From 2000 to 2008, election overload fatigued voters when the Zimbabwe government balloted citizens in six elections – an average of one election every fourteen months. The July 2013 election was also harmonised, ending the shaky MDC–Zanu PF coalition government. The election was preceded by a generally peaceful adoption of a new constitution on 16 March 2013. The constitution was a milestone achievement but a dead letter, stipulating that all security forces and government institutions, including the state media, must be impartial and that reforms on all freedoms must be implemented. However, as in the past, Zanu PF dragged its feet on the full implementation of critical reforms needed to improve the human rights environment and create conditions for democratic elections. Such pipe dream reforms included: police training; renouncing the use of violence; ensuring that the government fully and impartially enforced domestic laws in bringing all perpetrators of politically motivated violence to justice; freedom from harassment and intimidation; the respect for the rule of law; and full realisation of the rights to freedom of association and assembly, and the promotion of freedom of expression and communication.

This chapter discusses the prohibition of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment as laid down in the European Convention on Human Rights, other Council of Europe instruments, in EU law and in international instruments. In the final section, a short comparison between the different instruments is made.

This chapter surveys the evidence for extremity prostheses and assistive technology (walking sticks, canes, crutches, corrective footwear) in classical antiquity. It discusses the different ways in which an extremity such as an arm or leg might be lost (surgical intervention, military activity, judicial and extra-judicial punishment, self-mutilation or deliberate mutilation), and how individuals dealt with their resulting impairments and disabilities. Not everyone could utilise a prosthesis due to the nature of their impairment; they might need to, or indeed choose to, use another type of assistive technology, such as a crutch.

The chapter traces the origins of human dignity, showing how it was originally used to denote titles of honor but is now seen as a universal human right or as undergirding universal human rights. In the context of discussing dignity rights, the chapter highlights international human rights treaties and national constitutions making refeerence to the concept of human dignity, which, in modern usage, has to do with the inherent worth of a life. The chapter discusses how human dignity is the foundation for many human rights, including the right to life, the right to be free from torture and other forms of cruelty, and the right to be free of discrimination. The chapter describes existing jus cogens norms prohibiting various acts that violate fundamental human rights, concluding that the death penalty must be abolished because it makes use of credible death threats, inflicts psychological torture, and violates an array of basic human rights. The chapter details how non-lethal corporal punmishments have already been abandoned and how the death penalty has been abolished or curtailed in many countries, with international criminal law tribunals precluding the death penalty's use.