Corporal Punishment Report Outline - Redress

punishment in the 2010 Child Act, 13 which may serve as opening for broader
reforms.
Sudanese law and practice does not take place in a vacuum. Sudan is bound by
international law – indeed, international human rights treaties to which Sudan is a
party form an integral part of the Bill of Rights in the Interim National Constitution
(INC) of 2005. 14 The Report therefore examines applicable standards, including
consideration of Sudan’s practice by regional and international treaty bodies over
the last twenty years, to determine the compatibility of Sudan’s law and practice
with international law. The question of corporal punishment has also been a
highly topical issue in other countries in the region and around the world, and the
Report shows a growing trend towards the abolishment of such practices as
judicial sanctions due to a combination of legislative reform and developments in
the jurisprudence. In its final Chapter, the Report puts forward the case for the
abolition of corporal punishment. The practice is not only found to be contrary to
binding international standards but is also frequently harmful, discriminatory, and
arbitrary, and therefore incompatible with the basic principles governing the rule
of law.
Sudan is at a crossroads. A constitutional review is underway and there are
outstanding demands for a fundamental reform of Sudan’s criminal laws and
public order laws. 15 The choice is between maintaining a system of punishments
associated with the repressive and arbitrary use of state power on the one hand,
and laws that respect human rights and do not discriminate, unduly harm, or
humiliate those that are found to have committed an offence, on the other.
13 See article 77 (d) of the 2010 Child Act; however, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed serious
concerns that ‘under article 36 of the Sudan Interim Constitution, the death penalty may be imposed on persons below the
age of 18 in cases of retribution or hudud’. See Concluding Observations: Sudan, UN Doc. CARC/C/SDN/CO/3-4, 1
October 2010, para.35.
14 Article 27 (3) of the Interim National Constitution 2005.
15 For current developments, see UNMIS, Republic of Sudan Constitution Making Symposium, May 2011, available at
http://unmis.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?tabid=4865, and for reforms, see Oette, supra note 8, and REDRESS and
Sudanese Human Rights Monitor, Criminal Justice and Human Rights: An agenda for effective human rights protection in
Sudan’s new constitution, February 2012.
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