General Assembly

The World Assembly understands there to be fundamental rights to life, dignity, and legal recognition for all persons within its jurisdiction. From these basic rights, a right to freedom from torture can be extrapolated. In pursuit of a strong international solution to ensure that all peoples are guaranteed this right, the World Assembly hereby enacts the following:

1. For the purposes of this resolution, “torture” is defined as any act which seeks to inflict severe psychological or physical pain or trauma against an individual for an interest in:

   1. coercing persons into providing information or consent, or complying with demands that are not strictly necessary to the conduction of law enforcement or military action; or

   2. punishing persons or using their pain or trauma to coerce or influence others.

2. Subjecting a person to torture is to be treated as a serious criminal offence in individual member-states’ jurisdictions and, when done in large scale against a civilian population, a crime against humanity as covered by international law. Aiding the execution of these crimes and complicity in torture must also be criminalised, with sanctions to be set proportionately to involvement.

3. The prior clause shall be interpreted as mandating the criminalization of significant involvement in the planning, ordering, or execution of torture; and as mandating the criminalization of compliance with an order to torture, except where:

   1. compliance was necessary to avoid grave punishment upon the complying person or another person known to the complying person, and

   2. that punishment is not merely financial or on the basis of reputation.

4. Member-states must provide educational materials for persons directly or indirectly serving them in roles that involve interrogation, criminal investigation, or the handling of prisoners or detainees, including instruction on the international prohibition of torture and the rights of persons regarding it.

5. It is the duty of every member-state to combat the practice of torture in its institutions and among its inhabitants. Member-states' governments are required to thoroughly investigate any credible report or accusation of torture within their jurisdiction, and prosecute it.

6. Confessions, testimonies, statements, and any other piece of evidence acquired by means of torture shall be considered inadmissible in every court proceeding, national or otherwise. Evidence an accused produced against themselves by torturing another person is admissible exclusively for the purpose of facilitating proceedings against them. The victims of torture may also use evidence produced by their torturing to prove the innocence of themselves or others on related accusations.

7. Member states may not retaliate against persons via direct or indirect means for reporting or attempting to report a violation of this resolution's mandates that is credible to the best of the reporter's knowledge, and must take effective action to curtail any retaliation which occurs in the jurisdiction of their state.