24 by the fear, anxiety and inferiority induced for the purpose of humiliating and degrading the victim and breaking his physical and moral resistance.27 70. The abovementioned international instruments and its own case law lead the Court to conclude that there is a universal prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, independent of any codification or declaration, since all these practices constitute a violation of peremptory norms of international law.28 The Court also notes the growing trend towards recognition, at international and domestic levels, of the impermissible character of corporal punishment, with regard to its inherently cruel, inhuman and degrading nature. In consequence, a State Party to the American Convention, in compliance with its obligations arising from Articles 1(1), 5(1) and 5(2) of that instrument, is under an obligation erga omnes to abstain from imposing corporal punishment, as well as to prevent its administration, for constituting, in any circumstance, a cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. 71. In the instant case, Mr. Caesar was subjected to corporal punishment by flogging, pursuant to a sentence delivered by the High Court of Trinidad and Tobago, according to the terms of Trinidad and Tobago’s Corporal Punishment Act. This law authorizes domestic courts to order the application of sentences of corporal punishment for certain crimes, for any male offender, in addition to any other punishment for which he is liable, whether by flogging with a “cat-o-nine tails” or by whipping with a tamarind rod, birch or other switches, “or in either case such other instruments as the President may from time to time approve” (supra para. 49(7)). 72. According to the evidence presented to the Court, the “cat-o-nine tails” consists of a plaited rope instrument made up of nine knotted thongs of cotton cord, 30 inches long and less than one quarter of an inch in diameter, attached to a handle, which are lashed across the back of the subject, between the shoulders and the lower area of the spine (supra para. 49(8)). The instrument is designed to bruise and lacerate the skin of the subject and is also intended to cause severe physical and psychological suffering. As such, the Court is convinced that the cat-onine tails, as regulated and used in Trinidad and Tobago for the administration of corporal punishment by flogging, is used to inflict a cruel, inhuman and degrading form of punishment. 73. Regarding the law and practice in Trinidad and Tobago of judicial corporal punishment by flogging, the Court considers that the very nature of this punishment reflects an institutionalization of violence, which, although permitted by the law, ordered by the State’s judges and carried out by its prison authorities, is a sanction incompatible with the Convention.29 As such, corporal punishment by flogging 27 Case of Loayza-Tamayo. Judgment of September 17, 1997. Series C No. 33, para. 57. See also, Eur. Cour H.R., Case of Ireland v. the United Kingdom, supra note 25, para. 167. 28 Cf. Case of the Gómez-Paquiyauri Brothers, Judgment of July 8, 2004, Series C No. 110, para. 112; Case of Maritza Urrutia. Judgment of November 27, 2003, Series C No. 103, para. 92; and CantoralBenavides Case. Judgment of August 18, 2000, Series C No. 69, paras. 102 and 103. 29 Cf., in the same vein, Tyrer v. United Kingdom, supra note 21. In this regard, the Special Rapporteur on Torture of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (supra note 17) has noted that “[…] the ‘lawful sanctions’ exclusion must necessarily refer to those sanctions that constitute practices widely accepted as legitimate by the international community, such as deprivation of liberty through imprisonment, which is common to almost all penal systems. […] By contrast, the Special Rapporteur cannot accept the notion that the administration of such punishment as stoning to death, flogging and amputation […] can be deemed lawful simply because the punishment has been authorized in a