Article 5 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

"Obviously, no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

OK, it doesn’t actually start with "obviously," but I like to imagine the commissioners all murmuring to themselves “obviously” when this item was brought up.

I’m not sure what the causal effect of Article 5 (or the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture) has been on reducing torture globally, though the physical integrity rights index (which “captures the extent to which people are free from government torture and political killings”) has increased from 0.48 in 1948 to 0.67 in 2024 (which is good). However, the index reached 0.67 already back in 2001, so at least according to this metric, we haven’t made much progress in the past 25 years. Reducing government torture and killings seems to be low in tractability.

Despite many [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
May 18th, 2025

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7FvDvMQypyua4kTL5/most-painful-condition-known-to-mankind-a-retrospective-of

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Dr. Caroline Ran speaking at the 2025 Symposium on the recent advances in Cluster Headache research and medicine

From Burish et al. (2020). Cluster headache is one of the most intensely painful human conditions: Results from the International Cluster Headache Questionnaire

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Black Lives Matter Co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors