The IAJ’s Mandate: What It Investigates and the Obligations It Applies

This page describes the IAJ’s areas of investigation, the treaty and customary obligations it applies, and the 24 systemic factors identified from its initial intake. It supplements the About page.

What the IAJ Investigates

The IAJ’s mandate extends to any human rights violation by official conduct, in any setting, under any obligation binding on the United States. It sets its investigative agenda on the basis of complaints received, evidence gathered, and the gaps in accountability that its mandate requires it to address, and that agenda will continue to develop as new complaints and evidence arrive.

The areas described below are among the IAJ’s current and developing lines of investigation. They are illustrative, not exhaustive: they indicate the breadth of the IAJ’s work, not its limits. Whatever the setting, each matter is analyzed against every applicable treaty framework and conducted to the same methodological standard.

Judicial Processes, Family Courts, and Child Protective Services

The IAJ’s initial intake has been dominated by complaints concerning family courts and child protective services — coercive parent–child separation, denial of medical care, procedural weaponization, retaliation for assertion of legal rights, and denial of disability accommodation. From that intake the IAJ has identified 24 systemic factors of official conduct plausibly constituting torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, described below. This work continues, and it is where the IAJ’s analytical framework on non-custodial official harm has been most fully developed.

Immigration Enforcement, Border Operations, and Immigration Detention

The IAJ investigates human rights violations arising in immigration enforcement and removal, at the border, and in immigration detention, including facilities operated under government contract. Its areas of concern include conditions of confinement and medical neglect in detention; deaths in custody; solitary confinement and other restrictive housing; the detention of children and the separation of families; arbitrary and prolonged detention; the treatment of asylum seekers; and removal to countries where persons face a real risk of torture or other irreparable harm.

Immigration detention is detention in the conventional sense. It falls squarely within the anti-torture framework and within OPCAT Article 4(2)’s definition of deprivation of liberty, without need for the IAJ’s argued jurisdictional-custody analysis. The applicable obligations include the absolute prohibition of torture and CIDT (UNCAT Articles 1 and 16; ICCPR Article 7), the prohibition of refoulement (UNCAT Article 3; the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, to which the United States acceded in 1968), the rights of all detained persons to humane treatment and to freedom from arbitrary detention (ICCPR Articles 9 and 10), procedural protections against arbitrary expulsion for persons lawfully in the territory (ICCPR Article 13), the protection of family life and of children (ICCPR Articles 17, 23, and 24; CRC Articles 3, 9, 22, and 37), and freedom from racial discrimination (ICERD Articles 5 and 6). The IAJ’s Unified Framework on parent–child separation applies with equal force to separations effected through immigration enforcement.

The Rights of Indigenous Peoples

The IAJ investigates violations of human rights affecting American Indian and Alaska Native peoples and Native Hawaiians where those violations engage the United States’ human rights obligations. Its areas of concern include the removal of Indigenous children from their families, communities, and cultures, including compliance with the protections of the Indian Child Welfare Act and the continuing consequences of the federal Indian boarding school system; violence against Indigenous women and girls, including missing and murdered Indigenous persons and the jurisdictional gaps that leave those cases uninvestigated; the protection of lands, waters, sacred sites, and cultural life; and the application of free, prior, and informed consent to decisions affecting Indigenous peoples.

This work sits at the point where Indigenous rights and general human rights obligations overlap. The applicable framework includes ICERD, as interpreted by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in General Recommendation No. 23 (1997) and applied to the United States through its early warning and urgent action procedure; ICCPR Article 27 and the Human Rights Committee’s General Comment No. 23 on the rights of minorities to their culture; the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, under which the Inter-American Commission has found the United States in violation in respect of Indigenous land rights; the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which the United States endorsed in 2010; and, where their elements are engaged, UNCAT and the CRC.

The IAJ conducts this work with respect for the sovereignty and self-determination of Indigenous nations. It does not investigate on behalf of an Indigenous nation or community without that nation’s or community’s consent, and it seeks to work alongside tribal governments, Native organizations, and survivors rather than in their place.

State-Sponsored Human Experimentation: MKUltra and Related Programs

MKUltra was the Central Intelligence Agency’s program of behavioral and chemical experimentation on human subjects, authorized in 1953, with predecessor and successor programs. Subjects were exposed to drugs, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and other techniques, frequently without their knowledge or consent, through research conducted at universities, hospitals, prisons, and other institutions. In 1973 the Agency ordered the program’s records destroyed. What is publicly known derives largely from the congressional inquiries of 1975 to 1977 and from a cache of financial records that survived the destruction order.

The IAJ is preparing to investigate MKUltra and its related programs. No investigation has yet begun. At this stage the IAJ is reviewing publicly available accounts, including testimony published on video channels and social media.

Nonconsensual medical and scientific experimentation is expressly prohibited by the second sentence of ICCPR Article 7, and the Nuremberg Code established the requirement of voluntary consent a decade before the program began. The IAJ’s concern is not only with the historic acts but with the obligations that continue after them: to investigate, to establish and disclose the truth, to identify and acknowledge victims, and to provide redress and rehabilitation (UNCAT Articles 12 to 14; ICCPR Article 2(3)). Those obligations are informed by the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation (General Assembly Resolution 60/147) and the Updated Set of Principles for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights through Action to Combat Impunity, which recognize the right of victims and of society to know the truth about past violations. The IAJ invites accounts from survivors, their families, and persons with knowledge of these programs.

Cross-Cutting Concerns

Across every matter it investigates, whether or not it falls within an area described above, the IAJ examines discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, disability, sex, and Indigenous identity; retaliation against persons who assert their rights; the treatment of children; and the absence of effective remedy. These are not separate programs. They are the lenses through which every case is read.

The Breadth of the IAJ’s Human Rights Mandate

Consistent with the Paris Principles’ requirement that a mandate be as broad as possible covering all human rights, the IAJ investigates violations across the full range of obligations binding on the United States — whether by ratification, signature, or operation of customary international law. The IAJ does not limit itself to any single treaty, category of rights, population, or institutional setting.

The instruments below differ in legal force. The United States is bound by the treaties it has ratified, subject to the reservations, understandings, and declarations it attached on ratification; the validity and effect of some of those are contested, as the IAJ explains on its legal framework page. By signature alone, it is bound only to refrain from acts that would defeat a treaty’s object and purpose, not to perform each of its provisions. Certain norms bind it as customary international law independently of any treaty. Other instruments serve the IAJ as interpretive benchmarks. Each entry indicates which applies.

Convention Against Torture (UNCAT) — Ratified 1994 Article 1 defines torture as an act causing severe pain or suffering, physical or mental, intentionally inflicted for an enumerated purpose, by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official, excluding pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. Article 16 separately prohibits cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment that does not amount to torture. The text of Article 1 contains no setting qualifier; on ratification, however, the United States stated its understanding that Article 1 applies only to acts directed against persons in the offender’s custody or physical control. Article 3 prohibits return of any person to a state where there are substantial grounds for believing they would be in danger of torture. Articles 12 to 14 require prompt investigation, effective complaint, and redress, obligations that continue for as long as they remain unmet. The IAJ’s legal framework argues on five independent grounds that UNCAT’s prohibition extends to judicial, family court, CPS, law enforcement, and administrative conduct, in addition to its conventional application to immigration and other detention.
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) — Ratified 1992 Protects the right to life (Art. 6); prohibition of torture, CIDT, and nonconsensual medical or scientific experimentation (Art. 7); freedom from arbitrary detention (Art. 9); humane treatment of all persons deprived of liberty (Art. 10); procedural protection against arbitrary expulsion (Art. 13); fair trial and equal access to justice (Art. 14); family life and the protection of children (Arts. 17, 23, 24); freedom of expression and petition without retaliation (Arts. 19, 25); equal protection (Art. 26); and the cultural rights of minorities and Indigenous peoples (Art. 27).
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) — Ratified 1994 Prohibits racial discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of national or ethnic origin, in the administration of justice and in all official conduct (Art. 5), and requires effective remedies (Art. 6). ICERD is the principal ratified treaty protecting Indigenous peoples in the United States. Although Article 1(2) excludes distinctions between citizens and non-citizens, the Committee has confined that exclusion narrowly (General Recommendation No. 30), and the Convention reaches racial and ethnic disparities in immigration enforcement, CPS conduct, family court separation orders, and the judicial treatment of pro se litigants.
Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees — Acceded 1968 Binds the United States to the substantive obligations of the 1951 Refugee Convention, including the prohibition of refoulement (Art. 33) and the prohibition of penalties for irregular entry by refugees (Art. 31). The prohibition of refoulement to torture is also absolute under UNCAT Article 3 and customary international law.
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) — Signed 2009, not ratified As a signatory, the United States is obliged to refrain from acts that would defeat the treaty’s object and purpose, under the rule reflected in Article 18 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties; the United States is not a party to that Convention but considers many of its provisions to reflect customary international law. The signature obligation does not extend to performance of each provision. Art. 13 requires effective access to justice; Art. 14 addresses deprivation of liberty; Art. 15 prohibits torture, CIDT, and nonconsensual experimentation against persons with disabilities; Art. 17 protects integrity of the person. Denial of disability accommodation in judicial proceedings or in detention simultaneously engages UNCAT, the ICCPR, and the CRPD.
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) — Signed 1995, not ratified The U.S. is the only UN member state not to have ratified the CRC. Its core protections — the best interests of the child (Art. 3), the right to maintain family relations (Arts. 8–9), protection of refugee and asylum-seeking children (Art. 22), the right of Indigenous children to their culture (Art. 30), and the prohibition of torture, CIDT, and arbitrary deprivation of liberty (Art. 37) — are subject to the signatory’s obligation not to defeat the Convention’s object and purpose. Some, such as the prohibition of torture, also bind the United States as customary international law; the IAJ otherwise uses the Convention as an interpretive benchmark.
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) — Signed 1980, not ratified Art. 2 requires elimination of discrimination in public and official life; Art. 15 guarantees equal rights in courts and tribunals; Art. 16 addresses family rights. Gendered patterns in family court conduct, and violence against Indigenous women and girls, are within the IAJ’s areas of investigation.
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) — Signed 1977, not ratified The right to health (Art. 12), social security (Art. 9), adequate standard of living (Art. 11), and participation in cultural life (Art. 15) are implicated by official conduct that causes physical harm, strips persons of resources, denies medical care in custody, or severs communities from their lands and cultures.
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) — Endorsed by the United States 2010 Although a declaration rather than a treaty, UNDRIP articulates the minimum standards for the survival, dignity, and well-being of Indigenous peoples, many of which restate obligations binding under ICERD, the ICCPR, and customary law. These include self-determination, free, prior, and informed consent, protection against forcible removal of children, and redress for the taking of lands and cultural property.
Jus Cogens and Customary International Law The absolute prohibition on torture is a peremptory norm of general international law binding on the United States regardless of treaty ratification, reservation, or declaration. The International Court of Justice has confirmed its erga omnes character. The prohibitions of racial discrimination and of refoulement to torture, and the requirement of free and informed consent to medical experimentation recognized in the Nuremberg Code, form part of the same body of customary obligation.
The UN Charter — Articles 55 and 56 Obligate all member states to take joint and separate action to promote universal respect for human rights for all. Documentation of systematic violations for which no domestic remedy exists constitutes evidence of Charter non-compliance alongside specific treaty breach.
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide — Ratified 1988 The Genocide Convention establishes the prohibition of genocide as a treaty obligation supplementing its jus cogens status, and forms part of the framework of absolute, non-derogable prohibitions within which UNCAT obligations are interpreted and applied. Its recognition in Article II(e) that forcibly transferring children of a protected group is among the prohibited acts, when committed with intent to destroy that group in whole or in part, informs the IAJ’s analysis of historic and continuing Indigenous child removal. The IAJ does not make determinations of genocide; it documents facts and identifies the legal frameworks competent bodies may apply to them.
OPCAT (Optional Protocol to UNCAT) — Not signed or ratified by the United States The Optional Protocol establishes a system of preventive visits to places of detention and provides in Article 4(2), “for the purposes of the present Protocol,” the most precise treaty-level functional definition of deprivation of liberty: “any form of detention or imprisonment or the placement of a person in a public or private custodial setting which that person is not permitted to leave at will by order of any judicial, administrative or other authority.” The United States’ non-ratification leaves a protection gap: OPCAT would require a National Preventive Mechanism with legally secured access to places of detention. In its absence, the IAJ’s independent documentation of prisons, immigration detention, and other custodial settings contributes to oversight, without the access and powers such a mechanism would hold. The IAJ also draws an interpretive argument from Article 4(2) for its jurisdictional-custody framework.
The Inter-American System — OAS Charter obligations accepted Although the United States signed but has not ratified the American Convention on Human Rights, it is a founding member of the Organization of American States and is bound by the OAS Charter’s human rights obligations. The United States has not, however, accepted the contentious jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, so the Commission — not the Court — is the operative pathway for matters concerning the United States. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) receives individual petitions against the United States under the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and has found the United States in violation of it, including in matters concerning Indigenous land rights and immigration detention. It can issue precautionary measures, request information from the U.S. government, and publish findings that carry significant international weight.

The breadth of the IAJ’s mandate matters practically in every case it investigates. Depending on the facts established, a coercive parent–child separation order issued without due process can engage UNCAT Articles 1 and 16, ICCPR Articles 7, 9, 14, and 17, CRC Articles 3, 8, 9, and 37, CEDAW Articles 15 and 16 where sex discrimination is implicated, and ICESCR Articles 11 and 12 where the separation causes poverty or health deterioration. Where the family is Indigenous, ICERD, ICCPR Article 27, and CRC Article 30 may be engaged as well; where the separation is effected at the border and the family is seeking protection, the Refugee Protocol may join them. Which provisions apply, and whether any threshold such as torture, CIDT, or deprivation of liberty is met, depends on the evidence in each case. No single-treaty analysis captures the full human rights dimension of that one act. The IAJ analyzes every case against every applicable framework.

The 24 Systemic Factors

From the complaints and third-party reports it has received since opening intake in August 2025, the IAJ has so far identified 24 recurring categories of official conduct plausibly constituting torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment under UNCAT Articles 1 and 16. The Shadow Report presents them as preliminary patterns alleged, subject to verification; in the IAJ’s preliminary assessment, they are institutional patterns for which no effective domestic accountability mechanism exists. The full list of the 24 factors is set out in the Preliminary Shadow Report. The IAJ analyzes them at three levels:

Level 1 — Direct harm factors: specific prohibited acts causing documented severe suffering that satisfy the Article 1 five-element test or the Article 16 CIDT threshold.
Level 2 — Facilitation and mechanism factors: institutional mechanisms that perpetuate harm, defeat the lawful-sanctions carve-out, and make the harmful relationship inescapable.
Level 3 — Systemic impunity factors: the absence of investigation, prosecution, training, prevention, and remedy that allows direct harm to continue indefinitely.

The 24 factors were derived from an intake concentrated in family courts and child protective services. The three-level structure is not confined to those settings: the same distinction between direct harm, facilitating mechanism, and systemic impunity applies to immigration detention, to Indigenous child removal, and to the unremedied legacy of state-sponsored experimentation. In September 2025, the IAJ submitted to the Committee Against Torture its Preliminary Shadow Report, identifying the 24 systemic factors and requesting initiation of an Article 20 confidential inquiry into the United States.