Description
The agenda of eradicating torture emerged at the United Nations in 1945 in response to state atrocities committed during the second world war. However, the process of its recognition as a global norm stretched over a period of few decades involving multifarious actors in action at the UN. The United Nations has been engaged as an actor in making of an international norm against torture, eventually paving way for its legal recognition in 1984. But, being an intergovernmental organization, along with the states, it involved diverse actors influencing the process of defining the norm as well the extent of international jurisdiction. While torture has been defined and the move for its abolition defended on moral and legal grounds, the effect of politics between various actors at play in the UN along with the role of the organization and its bureaucracy as an entity in itself in making and working of the regime on torture remains ambiguous. This paper seeks to investigate the deliberations at the United Nations on the abolition of torture in order to analyse the complex process of norm-making in international organizations. It also seeks to use the lens of constructivism in order to examine the ‘Norm life cycle’ and its relevance for contemporary norm making at the UN.
