Torture, according to international law, is "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity." In addition to state-sponsored torture, individuals or groups may inflict torture on others for similar reasons. Torturers may derive sadistic gratification by inflicting torture, as was the case in the Moors Murders.
Throughout history, torture was a method of political re-education. In the 21st century, torture is widely considered to be a violation of human rights, and prohibited by article 5 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In times of war signatories of the Third Geneva Convention and Fourth Geneva Convention agree not to torture protected persons (POWs and enemy civilians) in armed conflicts.
International legal prohibitions on torture derive from a philosophical consensus that torture and ill-treatment are repugnant, abhorrent, and immoral. A further moral definition of torture proposes that the misdeed of torture consists in the disproportionate infliction of pain. These international conventions and philosophical propositions not withstanding, organizations such as Amnesty International that monitor abuses of human rights report a widespread use of torture condoned by states in many regions of the world.