On Monday, the Obama administration announced that it would continue the Bush administration practice of kidnapping individuals suspected of terrorism to other countries to be detained or interrogated. The Obama administration also announced that the U.S. would establish a system for monitoring their post-rendition treatment, in an attempt to ensure that individuals will not be tortured once they are transferred to other countries.

The administration's announcement forms part of the Justice Department's new recommendations on the interrogation and transfer of individuals. The newly revamped rendition program would rely "on assurances from the receiving country" to prevent torture. These so-called "diplomatic assurances" — that is, written guarantees from the receiving state that a person would not be subject to torture or other prohibited treatment upon return — are not a new concept; they were also employed by the Bush administration in the universally condemned "extraordinary rendition program" and proved singularly ineffective in preventing individuals from being tortured after transfer.

Speaking with reporters on Tuesday, Ian Kelly, a U.S. Department of State spokesman, gave further details of the mechanics of the Obama rendition program. Kelly stated that the State Department would "establish a kind of monitoring mechanism that allows us to be able to make sure, after the prisoner has been transferred, that he or she is not being abused." The practice "puts in place" said Kelly, "a mechanism which we still have to define." Kelly noted that the Inspector Generals from the Departments of State, Homeland Security and Defense would jointly issue annual reports on how the system is working to ensure its efficacy (only parts of these reports may be unclassified and released to the public).

So far, the only protection against torture that the Obama administration has offered in its recommendations is the receipt of "diplomatic assurances" that torture will not be used. But as Amrit Singh noted in an interview with the New York Times, experience clearly demonstrates that "diplomatic assurances" have "proven completely ineffective in preventing torture."

Take, for example, the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen and victim of "extraordinary rendition". Before rendering Arar to Syria, the U.S. government reportedly relied on "assurances" obtained from the Syrian government that Arar would not be tortured. Despite these assurances and visits by consular officials from the Canadian Embassy in Damascus while he was detained, Arar was brutally tortured — a fact proven in the course of a two-year long public inquiry in Canada.

As a party to the U.N. Convention Against Torture, the U.S. is under an absolute obligation not to commit torture or to facilitate its occurrence. By instituting a rendition program that relies on "diplomatic assurances," the Obama administration is turning its back on U.S. obligations under the U.N. Convention.

A rendition program with "diplomatic assurances" as its centerpiece will be ineffective at preventing torture. We urge the administration to uphold its absolute obligation to prevent torture. Any transfer it engages in must fully comply with domestic and international human rights law, and this precludes transfers based on "diplomatic assurances" in any situation where there is a real risk of torture. Anything less will mark a return to the unlawful "extraordinary rendition" program.

Listen to a podcast of ACLU attorneys Alice Farmer and Catherine Kim discuss corporal punishment of students with disabilities, and alternatives to this type of discipline.

(Originally published in Huffington Post.)

In the 2006 – 2007 school year, nearly quarter of a million school children were subjected to corporal punishment in public schools. Impairing Education, a report released yesterday by the ACLU and Human Rights Watch, finds that students with disabilities — who have a right to appropriate, inclusive educational programs that give them the opportunity to thrive — are nonetheless subjected to this violent discipline at disproportionately high rates.

Corporal punishment — from paddling to beating to throwing children into walls or floors — is routine in public schools in many parts of the United States. Impairing Education documents many such cases. No student should be subjected to these abusive forms of discipline, but students with disabilities, who already face extra challenges, can be particularly vulnerable to physical or psychological harm from these punishments.

Anna M.’s son, who has autism, was seven years old when he was punished in school. She told me about an experience at his elementary school:

I’m in the front office ... They bring [my son] into the room. His nose is beet red. He lifts up his shirt sleeve, I get a glimpse of scratches all up his arm. I got overwhelmed, I couldn’t focus ... I wanted to get my son to the doctor. I get him home and I take off his clothes. He was marked, top of his arms, under his arms, down his torso. He had a busted lip, which I hadn’t noticed at first. He said, “they made me wash the blood off before I saw you.”

Corporal punishment causes pain, humiliation, and in some cases deep bruising or other serious injury; it also can have long-lasting psychological consequences. Students with disabilities may see their underlying conditions worsened as a result. Furthermore, it creates a violent, degrading school environment in which all students — and particularly students with disabilities — may struggle to succeed.

Anna M.’s son has changed after he was restrained and beaten. He now struggles with anger, has had nightmares, is reluctant to leave his mother’s side and fears running into the person that administered his punishment. Anna said, “I was afraid for his life, to be honest. He was 52 pounds, or maybe even less, at this point.”

The use of corporal punishment on children with disabilities violates the right to freedom from cruel, degrading treatment and violence guaranteed to them under international human rights law. Children with disabilities have the right to an inclusive education, yet corporal punishment impinges on this right and creates barriers to their success.

There are positive, nonviolent approaches to school discipline that have been proven to lead to safe environments in which children can learn. Positive behavioral supports teach children why what they did was wrong and gives them the tools necessary to improve their behavior. The staff in our schools must be trained on how to discipline children effectively and humanely.

No child should be hit, especially the most vulnerable.

In October 2005, Mustafa Setmarian Nassar, a Spanish citizen of Syrian origin and an influential Islamic theorist, was apprehended by agents of the Pakistani government and handed over to U.S. officials. Nassar'swife and family have not heard from him since. All evidence points to the fact that Nassar was a target of the "extraordinary rendition" program, and to this day, the United States government has refused to discuss its involvement in Nassar's disappearance. His wife and family do not know where he is located, or if he is alive or dead. For the past four years, his four children have been brought up without their father.

In a statement issued today, Nassar's wife commented on her family's four-year long ordeal:

Without knowing what has happened to my husband, I don't know where to go with my life or how to move on. The pain of not knowing is becoming unbearable and I am so concerned for my children's wellbeing if they should find out about the tragedy that we are being put through…If my husband is suspected of doing anything wrong, he should get his day in court. If he isn't, he should be let go. No one deserves to be treated like this. Everywhere I turn I am denied information, so I am asking the U.N. to help bring my husband, myself and our children a little bit of justice.

As requests for information about Nassar's forced disappearance have been ignored by the U.S. government, his wife has been left with no other choice but to turn to the international community for assistance.

Today, the ACLU, together with Alkarama for Human Rights and Reprieve, sent a request to the U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, asking it to take up Nassar's case with the government of the United States. We requested the working group fully investigate the specific circumstances of Nassar's enforced disappearance at the hands of the U.S. government.

Similar requests were also sent to Martin Scheinin, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, and to Manfred Nowak, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, on Nassar's behalf. These requests implicate the U.S. government as well as the governments of Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Syria and Spain, who may all have been involved in some capacity in Nassar's enforced disappearance.

Learn more about Nassar here.

The medical professionals worked to strap the detainee "into a chair, Velcro his head to a metal restraint, then tether a tube into the man's stomach through his nose to pump in liquid nourishment twice a day."

After the Miami Herald wrote about the 30 hunger striking detainees in the Guantánamo Bay detention camps in January, we were concerned. We wrote an urgent letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates to bring his attention to the cruel, inhuman, degrading and unlawful treatment of the 30 hunger striking detainees. In that letter, we pointed out that hunger strikes were indications of a larger problem concerning the conditions of confinement at the detention camp. A week later, Amnesty International, Human Rights First and Human Rights Watch joined us in writing to President Obama requesting full access to the detention facility at Guantánamo to independently examine and report on conditions of confinement. We still have not received an answer to our request.

When President Obama issued an executive order calling on the Department of Defense (DOD) to investigate conditions of confinement at Guantánamo and whether they conformed to Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and to "other applicable laws," we hoped that the DOD report would shed some light on the actual conditions at the camp and the role of medical personnel during interrogations and forced feedings.

One month later, the DOD report came out and the DOD – unsurprisingly, since the DOD was policing itself – claimed that conditions at Gitmo were in compliance with the Geneva Conventions. We knew this was a total whitewash, and that a real independent assessment would be necessary to ascertain the actual conditions at Guantánamo.

In an article published last Friday in The Lancet medical journal, attorneys Leonard S. Rubenstein of Physicians for Human Rights and George J. Annas of the Boston University School of Public Health wrote that Guantánamo detainees lack "access to independent medical assessments, and [that] the Department of Defense has continued to refuse requests by medical and human-rights groups to do medical assessments of prisoners independently or jointly with military physicians." As a result, the health-related conclusions made in the DOD report cannot be validated. Rubenstein and Annas also noted that some of the medical personnel that were supposed to provide ethical care and assistance instead supported inhuman interrogations or forced-feedings of competent individuals, and the actions of some physicians threatened the overall health of the prisoners at Guantánamo. These physicians, therefore, are complicit in the force-feeding of hunger strikers. They write:

Military physicians have been important in stopping hunger strikes at the detention centre in Guantanamo Bay from the outset. At least since 2005, they have used restraint chairs to put hundreds of prisoners in eight-point restraints (ie, both ankles, wrists, and shoulders, one lap belt, and one head restraint) before, during, and after the placement of a nasogastric tube so that the prisoners can be force-fed. The use of coercion, physical force, or physical restraints to force-feed competent individuals on hunger strike has been condemned by the World Medical Association as a form of "inhuman and degrading treatment" that is prohibited according to Common Article 3.

Rubenstein and Annas observed that two years before this practice began; President Bush's Bioethics Council described the process as a form of torture, but this opinion was ignored by the Bush administration, which also ignored statements by leading medical associations condemning the unethical use of restraint chairs and the involvement of physicians in force-feeding. Journalist Andy Worthington concurs: He has written extensively on the issue of hunger strikers at Guantánamo, noting the severity of forced-feeding as one aspect of Bush administration's torture regime. The ramifications of these forced-feedings continue to be felt today, writes Worthington, and the excessive force used during these feedings amounts to torture.

When discussing the interrogations, Rubenstein and Annas added:

The World Medical Association, American Medical Association, and American Psychiatric Association have all established that the participation of physicians in interrogation, even in the absence of torture, is a breach of their duty not to inflict harm, and is therefore unethical.

It is not surprising that the mental health of the detainees is of particular concern to the authors of The Lancet report. They noted that the detainees continue to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety as a result of their experiences, as evaluated by detailed psychological and medical examinations of several detainees released from Guantánamo. Rubenstein and Annas suggested three needed actions from the DOD:

1. abandon the practices that are inconsistent with medical ethics (including for-feeding competent individuals on hunger strike);
2. allow for independent medical reviews of the mental and physical health conditions of the detainees at Guantánamo; and
3. establish an independent commission to review the role of physicians and psychologists as well as the entire regime of detention and interrogation of terror suspects by the U.S. and the protocol for dealing with prisoners on hunger strikes.

President Obama has promised to depart from the Bush administration's abusive national security polices. Although his administration abandoned some of the worst abuses (i.e. torture and secret detention), much work remains to be done, including the much-needed reversal of the cruel policy of forced feeding.