Survivors International guarded about
APA's Resolution on Torture
Comments from SI Clinical Director, Uwe Jacobs, PhD
San Francisco, CA, August 21, 2007 – The Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (APA) issued a resolution to re-affirm its condemnation of torture and other forms of abuse in the context of detaining so-called enemy combatants. While APA Ethics Director, Dr. Stephen Behnke, characterized the new resolution as “a step in the right direction”, Dr. Uwe Jacobs, Clinical Director of Survivors International, expressed mixed emotions and said the APA did not go far enough. “I am concerned that inserting qualifiers into the language in the manner it was done weakens the intent and enforceable standards. There is absolutely no necessity to do that if your only interest is to protect human rights”, said Jacobs, referring to a struggle he said the human rights faction of psychologists partly lost. “We wanted to simply say that sleep deprivation and sensory deprivation were prohibited, for example, and the leadership insisted that we insert qualifiers that require that the abuse causes lasting harm, for example, and we’re not sure that this can always be proved. What if this was done and somebody thinks it didn’t cause lasting harm? Does that make it ethical? You expect to compromise a little in any politics but this is a difference that’s hard to split.” Jacobs went on to say that in spite of its wonderful appearance as a human rights document, the passage of the new resolution suffered from problems, some in content and some more procedural, and pointed to the following issues: - A simple moratorium that would have asked psychologists not to work in detention centers in which human rights are known to be violated was rejected by the APA leadership; - The alternate resolution that was passed by the Council of Representatives, APA’s governing body, was introduced specifically for the purpose of not letting the moratorium resolution come to a vote; - Even though the APA is an accredited non-governmental organization at the United Nations, the resolution does not adopt the UN Convention Against Torture (CAT) in its original form as its reference but the U.S. Reservations to the CAT. These reservations were articulated by the Reagan administration and are commonly regarded as weakening the CAT in questionable area of non-physical torture or other inhuman and degrading treatment; - The APA steadfastly refused to drop the qualifying statements with regard to sleep and sensory deprivation, in spite of repeated requests and explanations why they should not be adopted. “Only time will tell how much of a step this really was in the right direction”, Jacobs concluded, and a lot will depend on the advocacy APA is willing to put behind this resolution from here on forward. At least we have a clear prohibition of the most common techniques of mental torture, but we need to do more work to close all possible loopholes and to get our language absolutely clear.” | 