The Equality and Human Rights Commission defines degrading treatment as undignified and humiliating treatment. Whether treatment is considered degrading is dependent on several factors, including the duration of the treatment; physical and mental effects on the victim; and the victim's age, race, sex, and vulnerabilities.
Medical or scientific experimentation without the free consent of the subject[edit]
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in its Article 7 expressly prohibits the medical or scientific experimentation without free consent of its subject(s) and recognizes it as a particular form of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Moreover the Article 4.2 of the ICCPR expressly prohibits derogation from this prohibition in its Article 7 and thus is directly establishing it as Peremptory norm in this sense making the non-consensual medical or scientific experimentation potentially punishable under the provisions of national penal codes concerning the crimes of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in all countries which are parties of the ICCPR and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Davis, Michael (2005). "The Moral Justifiability of Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment". International Journal of Applied Philosophy. 19 (2): 161–178. doi:10.5840/ijap200519215.
Bojosi, Kealeboga N. (2004). "The death row phenomenon and the prohibition against torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment". African Human Rights Law Journal. 4 (2): 303–333.
Liebling, Alison (2011). "Moral performance, inhuman and degrading treatment and prison pain". Punishment & Society. 13 (5): 530–550. doi:10.1177/1462474511422159. S2CID147386708.
Weissbrodt, David; Heilman, Cheryl (2011). "Defining Torture and Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment". Law and Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice. 29: 343.
de Frouville, O. (2011). "The Influence of the European Court of Human Rights' Case Law on International Criminal Law of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment". Journal of International Criminal Justice. 9 (3): 633–649. doi:10.1093/jicj/mqr020.
