A/HRC/43/49 security, self-determination, dignity and identity, environmental orientation, emotional rapport and communal trust. 44. The aim of the following, separate discussion of specific methods, as well as their categorization based on commonly experienced psychological needs, is not to be authoritative, comprehensive or free from overlaps, or to exhaust the ways in which methods of psychological torture could or should be described or classified for a variety of purposes. 33 Rather, it is to provide an easily accessible, basic analytical framework facilitating the identification of individual methods, techniques or circumstances which, without using the conduit or effect of severe physical pain or suffering, may amount or contribute to torture as prohibited under international human rights law, whether alone or in conjunction with other psychological or physical methods, techniques and circumstances. 45. Given the virtually unlimited forms that torture can take, the selected examples are for illustrative purposes only. Various methods of torture may have similar or overlapping effects or reinforce each other in various other ways. In practice, specific methods of torture are rarely applied in isolation, but almost always in combination with other methods, techniques and circumstances, forming what has aptly been described as a “torturing environment”. 34 The following, separate discussion of specific methods therefore has primarily didactic and analytical purposes and should not be taken as suggesting that any such rigid classification maps neatly onto the varied practical manifestations of torture. 1. Security (inducing fear, phobia and anxiety) 46. Perhaps the most rudimentary method of psychological torture is the deliberate and purposeful infliction of fear. The fact that the infliction of fear itself can amount to torture has been widely recognized, not only by mandate holders 35 but also by the Committee against Torture,36 the European Court of Human Rights,37 the Human Rights Committee,38 the Inter-American Court39 and other mechanisms. 47. In practice, fear can be induced through a virtually limitless variety of techniques; some of the most common include the following: Direct or indirect threats of inflicting, repeating, or escalating acts of torture, mutilation, sexual violence or other abuse, including against relatives, friends or other inmates; Withholding or misrepresenting information about the fate of the victims or their loved ones, mock executions, witnessing the real or purported killing or torture of others; Provoking personal or cultural phobia through actual or threatened exposure to insects, snakes, dogs, rats, infectious diseases, etc.; Inducing claustrophobia through mock burials or confinement in boxes, coffins, bags and other cramped spaces (depending on the circumstances, these methods may also inflict progressively severe physical pain or suffering). 48. The extreme psychological distress and enormous inner conflicts triggered by fear are often underestimated. In reality, the prolonged experience of fear, in particular, can be 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 For other categorizations see, for example, Almerindo E. Ojeda, “What Is psychological torture?”, in Ojeda, ed., The Trauma of Psychological Torture, pp.1–2; and Pérez-Sales, Psychological Torture, pp. 257–258. Pérez-Sales, Psychological Torture, p. 284. A/56/156, paras. 3 and 7–8; E/CN.4/1986/15, para. 119; and E/CN.4/1998/38, para. 208. CAT/C/KAZ/CO/2, para. 7; and CAT/C/USA/CO/2, para. 24. European Court of Human Rights, Grand Chamber, Gäfgen v. Germany, Application No. 22978/05, Judgment, 1 June 2010, para. 108. Human Rights Committee, communication No. 74/1980, views of the Committee in the case of Miguel Angel Estrella v. Uruguay, para. 8.3. Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Baldeón-García v. Perú, Judgment, 6 April 2006, para. 119; and Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Tibi v. Ecuador, Judgment, 7 September 2004, paras. 147–149). 13