From the dark and dank cells of Syria’s notorious Sednaya slaughterhouse prison on the outskirts of Damascus, harrowing tales of survivors are emerging; horrors that defy human comprehension: systematic torture, extrajudicial executions and starvation as a weapon of war.

Once a symbol of Bashar al Assad's authoritarian rule, Sednaya prison now stands as an enduring indictment of international law's reluctance to confront normalised ‘crimes against humanity’.

Read Saleh, head of the volunteer rescue organisation White Helmet, described the prison as “hell on earth” and said he had helped 20,000 to 25,000 prisoners in the rescue operations.

Stretching over more than 50 years, the Assad dynasty rule carried out these international crimes with impunity, unchecked by the international legal system meant to prevent such atrocities.

However, war-trampled Syria is not an anomaly.

Across the Global South—spanning South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and beyond—prisons, torture chambers, and state-sanctioned brutality reflect the profound structural legacies of colonialism.

This phenomenon is rooted in the colonial histories of Global South countries, where practices of institutionalised violence were not only inherited from European colonial powers but often embedded into post-colonial governance, police forces and judicial systems—originally designed to suppress colonial subjects.

While the international community professes zero tolerance for torture, its inconsistencies to these regions to distinguish the intensity or severity of pain or suffering warranting the label of ‘torture’ has been opaque in the jurisprudence for the Global South.

The so-called universality of international law has been reduced to geographical outreach. Prohibition and accountability serve imperial and neocolonial agendas, subtly reinforcing Western hegemony.

Legacy of colonial violence

Contemporary international law repeatedly overlooks the inherited nature of institutional violence in post-colonial states.

Across global southern countries, the state apparatus, established initially to enforce colonial order, was largely retained with minimal reform after decolonisation.

In Africa, the scourge of police brutality and torture persists, with Nigeria and Kenya proving to be classic cases of these issues. In Nigeria, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) has been at the centre of global........

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