A/HRC/25/60
Advance Unedited Version
Distr.: General
4 March 2014
Original: English
Human Rights Council
Twenty-fifth session
Agenda item 3
Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil,
political, economic, social and cultural rights,
including the right to development
Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and
other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment, Juan E. Méndez
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Summary
The present report focuses on the scope and objective of the exclusionary rule in
judicial proceedings and in relation to acts by executive actors.
The Special Rapporteur elaborates on the exclusionary rule and its fundamental role
for upholding the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment by providing a disincentive to use such acts.
The report identifies State practice and elaborates on the rationale and scope of the
exclusionary rule in relation to formal proceedings. The second part of the report focuses
on the use of information obtained by torture or other ill-treatment by executive agencies,
including the collecting, sharing and receiving of such information from other States, and
its relation to the absolute prohibition of acts torture and other ill-treatment and the State’s
obligation to prevent and discourage such act. In this context the report also elaborates on
the threshold for State responsibility for complicity in torture or other ill-treatment or an
internationally wrongful act.
The Special Rapporteur finds that all actions of executive agencies shall be reviewed
under the absolute prohibition of torture and that the standards contained in the
exclusionary rule shall apply, by analogy, to the collecting, sharing and receiving of
information by executive actors.
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GE.14-
Late submission