The Line That Can Never Be Crossed
Most rights can be balanced against other interests. Article 3 can’t. No torture, no inhuman or degrading treatment, no exceptions.
Edition 3, first published 20 October 2026.
Yesterday, in Edition 2, I asked what the state owes a person when it knows their life is at risk. Today’s right goes further in one way. It can never be balanced away.
Most human rights come with a “but”. Your privacy matters, but it can be limited to protect others. You can speak freely, but not to incite violence.
Article 3 has no “but”.
What the right says
Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights is a single sentence:
“No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
There are no exceptions written into it. Article 15 lets a state suspend some of its Convention obligations “in time of war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation”. But Article 15(2) says there can be no derogation from Article 3. It is one of only four rights the Convention puts beyond suspension, alongside the right to life (except for deaths from lawful acts of war), the ban on slavery, and no punishment without law.
What it means in plain English
Article 3 is absolute. It is never weighed against anything else: not national security, not cost, not public opinion.
In Chahal v United Kingdom (1996), the Government wanted to deport a Sikh activist to India, saying he was a threat to national security. The Grand Chamber held that the UK could not send him where he faced a real risk of ill-treatment. The Convention, it said, “prohibits in absolute terms torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, irrespective of the victim’s conduct”.
The bar is high, though. Ill-treatment “must attain a minimum level of severity” before Article 3 applies (Ireland v United Kingdom, 1978). That depends on all the circumstances: how long it lasted, its physical or mental effects and, in some cases, the sex, age and state of health of the victim.
And it isn’t only about physical harm. In the same case, the Court described inhuman treatment as causing “intense physical and mental suffering”, and degrading treatment as treatment that arouses “feelings of fear, anguish and inferiority capable of humiliating and debasing” the people subjected to it.
Like Article 2, it puts three duties on the state.
Don’t ill-treat people. Police, prisons, hospitals, care settings and anyone else acting for the state must never subject anyone to inhuman or degrading treatment.
Protect people from others. The law must give real protection against serious ill-treatment, including by private individuals, and the authorities must take reasonable steps when they know, or ought to know, that someone is suffering it.
Investigate. When someone makes an arguable claim that they have been seriously ill-treated by the police or other agents of the state, there must be an effective official investigation, capable of identifying and punishing those responsible (Assenov v Bulgaria, 1998). As we’ll see, the UK Supreme Court has confirmed that the duty also covers serious violence by private individuals.
How it applies to children
The clearest Article 3 cases about families concern the state’s failure to protect children.
In A v United Kingdom (1998), a nine-year-old boy was beaten with a garden cane by his stepfather, “with considerable force on more than one occasion”. A jury acquitted the stepfather on the defence of “reasonable chastisement”. The Court held that English law had failed to protect the boy, and that this breached Article 3. Edition 1 covered this case.
In Z and Others v United Kingdom (2001), which I also mentioned in Edition 1, four siblings suffered serious neglect and abuse at home. The local authority knew about it from October 1987 at the earliest. The children weren’t taken into emergency care until 30 April 1992, and then only at their mother’s insistence. Over those four and a half years, a consultant child psychiatrist said, they had been subjected to “horrific experiences”.
The Grand Chamber was fair to social workers. It acknowledged “the difficult and sensitive decisions” they face, and “the important countervailing principle of respecting and preserving family life”. But it found “the failure of the system to protect these applicant children from serious, long-term neglect and abuse”, and a breach of Article 3.
How it applies in the Family Court
Article 3 is rarely argued directly in a Family Court. Its logic shows up in the Children Act 1989.
The test for a care or supervision order is “significant harm” (section 31(2)). “Harm” includes the impairment a child suffers from “seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another”, and “ill-treatment” includes “forms of ill-treatment which are not physical” (section 31(9)).
That matters both ways. A child can be harmed by abuse at home. A child can also be harmed by what the adults around them, and the system itself, put them through.
Yesterday’s question, and the harm you can’t see
Yesterday I asked whether the state can simply look away when it knows its own decision puts a life at real risk. Article 3 asks a related question about suffering.
Can the distress caused when the state keeps a parent and child apart ever reach the Article 3 threshold? In principle, in extreme cases, yes.
In Mubilanzila Mayeka and Kaniki Mitunga v Belgium (2006), a five-year-old girl arrived at Brussels airport with her uncle, on her way to join her mother, who had been granted refugee status in Canada. He didn’t have the papers she needed. Belgian officials held her for two months in a centre designed for adults, with no one assigned to look after her, then deported her to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where no family member was waiting. Her mother was given a phone number and little else. She found out about the deportation only when she rang the centre after it had happened.
The Court found that the girl had suffered inhuman treatment. It also found a breach of Article 3 in respect of her mother, because of the “deep distress and anxiety” she suffered. The essence of that kind of violation, the Court said, “lies in the authorities’ reactions and attitudes to the situation when it is brought to their attention”.
Be clear about what that case was. It was extreme: a small child, alone, locked up and expelled, and a mother kept in the dark. It wasn’t a contact dispute. The Court said a parent’s suffering must have “a dimension and character distinct from” the distress that inevitably comes with a serious rights violation. Delay and separation in family proceedings, however painful, are normally judged under Article 6 (a fair hearing in time) and Article 8 (family life), which later editions in this series cover.
But the principle is worth holding on to. Once a public body knows a parent or child is in serious distress, how it responds is part of how it treats them.
Why it matters for equality and policing
“No one” means no one. Article 3 protects every adult and every child, whatever their sex.
In Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis v DSD [2018] UKSC 11, two women attacked by John Worboys, a London black-cab driver, sued the police over serious failures in the investigation of his crimes. The Supreme Court dismissed the police appeal.
Lord Kerr said that laws against Article 3 ill-treatment “must be rigorously enforced and complaints of such conduct must be properly investigated”. The duty covers violence by private individuals, not only by agents of the state. And a majority held that serious failures in how an investigation is actually carried out can breach Article 3, not only failures in the law or the system.
The Court was clear about the limits, too. “Simple errors or isolated omissions” won’t breach Article 3. The failures have to be serious.
That duty doesn’t depend on who the victim is. A man, a woman or a child reporting serious violence is owed an effective investigation. For police forces, councils and children’s services, all public authorities under section 6 of the Human Rights Act, this isn’t optional. It’s the law.
What you can do
Report serious ill-treatment in writing, with dates, details and any reference numbers.
Ask what investigation followed. You’re entitled to ask what was done with your report, and why.
Raise safety concerns about a child early, in writing, with the local authority or the court. Take legal advice if you can.
Ask your MP two questions. How are police and children’s services making sure every report of serious violence is investigated properly, whoever the victim is? And when a public body knows its own decisions are causing a parent or child serious distress, what is it required to do?
This series is general information, not legal advice.
Sources
ECHR, Articles 3 and 15 (official text): https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr/convention_ENG
Human Rights Act 1998, s.6 and Sch 1: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1
Chahal v United Kingdom [GC] (1996), app. no. 22414/93, paras 79–80: https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-58004
Ireland v United Kingdom (1978), app. no. 5310/71, paras 162 and 167: https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-57506
Assenov and Others v Bulgaria (1998), app. no. 24760/94, para 102: https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-58261
A v United Kingdom (1998), app. no. 25599/94, paras 21–24: https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-58232
Z and Others v United Kingdom [GC] (2001), app. no. 29392/95, paras 73–75: https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-59455
Children Act 1989, s.31(2) and (9): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/41/section/31
Mubilanzila Mayeka and Kaniki Mitunga v Belgium (2006), app. no. 13178/03, paras 50, 58, 61–62 and 69–71: https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-77447
Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis v DSD and another [2018] UKSC 11, paras 24 and 29 (Lord Kerr): https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2015-0166
Charley Bickers, Founder of UN For Men - The United Global Alliance For Men & Boys
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