The concept of inhuman and degrading treatment

Abstract

No matter how technologically advanced our world may be so as to satisfy the human needs essential for survival and development, natural catastrophic disasters are an everyday occurrence and tend to and do frustrate the struggle for survival. But is is not natural causes alone that hinder the human goals of fulfilment but also the irrational elements existing in powerful groups of other human beings who inflict suffering through deprivation, exploitation and premeditated ill treatment. It is thus the ultimate scope of human rights to seek to protect individuals - individually as well as collectively - from man-made and thus avoidable holocausts such as those experienced during the last World War. Until then how a sovereign State treated its citizens was a matter exclusively for its own determination. The King afforded all the protection to his subjects. Till then individuals were not subjects of international law. Today this no longer so.