Torture : Quarterly Journal on Rehabilitation of Torture Victims and Prevention of Torture

Torture and Torturous Violence by Victoria Canning, Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Bristol, is an essay that extends the process of reflection the author began in 2016. On that occasion, she developed the concept of Sexually Torturous Violence (Canning, 2016).

Based on the reflections of a multidisciplinary group of experts, Physicians for Human Rights Israel and Antigone worked on the International Guiding Statement on Alternatives to Solitary Confinement, proposing global guidelines for reducing and finally overcoming the use of solitary confinement in prisons.

The reasons that lead a person to initiate a migratory movement are manifold. Therefore, the conditions and the way in which this movement is carried out are also diverse and unequal. Currently, there is not a single country in the world with open borders. This means that each country sets the requirements that a person must meet to enter its territory. This confirms that the "right to migrate" is not fully recognised in any legal system2. Because not everyone can meet these requirements or are denied visas, in many cases people are forced to use forms, routes, and modes of transportation that risk their integrity or lives to make a cross-border migration move...

This article introduces a new concept, that of "substitutive trauma," which refers to the utilisation of unprocessed collective traumatic experiences by political leadership to create shared feelings of victimhood and vengeful at-titudes within a population, protecting them onto new target/object. The analysis explores how a substitutive trauma-based psycho-po-litical dynamic culminated in February 2022 in Russia's war against Ukraine. The article argues that the community of traumatic stress professionals, studying and understanding macro-societal processes can contribute to reducing and ameliorating such destructive psycho-political developments...

The term voice hearing (VH) refers to the experience of hearing voices in the absence of corresponding external stimuli and is considered a hallucinatory experience. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013), hallucinations are perception-like experiences that occur without an external stimulus. They are vivid and clear, with the full force and impact of normal perceptions, and not under voluntary control. Specifically, auditory hallucinations involve the perception of sound, most frequently of voices (i...

As the exposure to state violence could have long-term negative consequences on the survivors, we analyzed which optics and measures could be used regardless of the vulnerabilities of the individual, their social status and institutional context. We examine the ways in which law enforcement system challenges individuals and measures used to practice resilience.We use the concept of resilience within torturing environment to achieve our goal. Various actors of Russian law enforcement and penitentiary systems - detainees and pris-oners, their family members, human rights activists, state agents etc...

INTRODUCTION: This paper presents a deep analysis of the impact of the Russian occupation on the activities of Berdyansk State Pedagogical University in Ukraine. This reflection sheds light on numerous challenges faced by the university community under occupation due to the the Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine, particularly emphasizing human rights violations and academic freedom. METHODS: Utilizing a mixed-method approach, this study employs document analysis, online surveys, and semi-structured interviews...

The article addresses the issue of prison overcrowding and how it can be tantamount to ill-treatment or torture under international law. Faced with such a broad phenomenon, the piece focuses on two elements that may help to assess this circumstance: the existence of a minimum standard with respect to living space, and the use of tools to establish the existence of harm caused by inhuman conditions of incarceration. The article will show novel jurisprudence of some Courts to secure reparation for victims (early release and reduction of sentence time as offsetting) and will address discussion on the scope and limitations of these decisions with the aim of proposing even more courageous measures to ensure group and generalised reparation measures to reduce the rates of structural institutional violence in prisons...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

The goal of the volume Migration and Torture in Today's World, curated by Fabio Perocco, is to show the existence of a link between torture and current migration policies.

Health professionals and lawyers in Israel have used the Istanbul Protocol (IP), the internationally accepted protocol for documenting torture and ill-treatment, for many years (Abu Akar et al., 2014; Weishut, 2022). A complete IP report requires substantial effort and investment of -mostly pro bono- experts, while the IP interview on which it is based is often an emotionally burdensome experience for clients. This paper presents insights about the use of the IP in Israel, as collected by a group of experts in the documentation of torture and ill-treatment, at the reception of the revised (2022) version...

Historically, torture often was understood as physical and/or psychological pain inflicted by governmental agents on an individual who is detained or imprisoned in governmental custody. As defined by the United Nations Convention Against Torture (UNCAT), however, torture is increasingly recognized as occurring in settings far beyond carceral settings.

Now that the updated version of the Istanbul Protocol has been published, there is an opportunity to reconstruct pieces of history on the long road to having forensic torture assessment tools. This article is an attempt to contribute to that journey through our firstperson personal memories of those experiences, especially in the early years, far before the drafting and approval of the Istanbul Protocol: Amnesty International (AI).

INTRODUCTION: Befriending is one of the rehabilitative services embedded in the holistic approach adopted by Spirasi, the Irish National Centre for the Rehabilitation of Survivors of Torture. Their befriending programme offers survivors one-to-one companionship from trained volunteer befrienders. The literature suggests that befriending programmes can improve quality of life, provide emotional support and combat loneliness. However, there is little empirical research of the effectiveness of befriending programmes for torture survivors...

INTRODUCTION: Communities who have fled torture and persecution in their home countries can find it difficult to access services in new cultural settings. Past research has shown that it is helpful to provide cultural bridging services to form a connection between locally-trained professionals and newly relocated communities. METHOD: This article presents, from a practitioner's perspective, a case example of cultural bridging involving a pilot programme to train individuals with refugee-like backgrounds (including torture survivors, former refugees, forced migrants) to become Cross-Cultural Facilitators supporting mental health services for displaced communities...

INTRODUCTION: Despite facing many challenges, some survivors of torture seeking asylum in the U.S. have courageously engaged in advocacy efforts to bring attention to human rights issues relevant to their own personal experiences. This study sought to add to our understanding of the characteristics of survivors who engage in advocacy in comparison with those who do not. METHOD: We analyzed demographic, social, and psychological quantitative data collected from survivors (n=730) connected to a support agency that regularly facilitates advocacy events using between-groups t-tests and regression analyses...

INTRODUCTION: As an IRCT member organization supporting survivors of torture, the Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition (TASSC) International places survivor engagement at the core of their work, aiming to provide safe and inclusive spaces for survivors to speak out and take meaningful action to prevent torture. This article describes TASSC's model for engaging survivors in advocacy and presents evidence on the personal impacts such engagement can have. METHOD: Each year from 2016-2019, TASSC administered a simple survey with questions for survivors to complete after their annual "Advocacy Day" in Washington D...

In 2021, a group of tortured people and their relatives in Navarre started a process of selforganisation that culminated in 2022 with the birth of the organisation Network of Tortured People of Navarre. The process of self-organisation of tortured people in Navarra is an uncommon phenomenon, which can offer interesting lessons especially for torture victims in other countries and contexts. The aim of this article is to describe a survivor-lead experience and to analyse the keys to this process of collective empowerment...

INTRODUCTION: While the literature encourages engaging torture survivors in the direction and provision of services, little is known about how best to do this. METHOD: We surveyed 82 member centres of the International Rehabilitation Council for TortureVictims (IRCT), a worldwide network of anti-torture organisations, and interviewed fourteen staff members and executive directors about current practices, best practices, and the advantages and disadvantages of engaging survivors...

This paper presents learnings from trauma recovery mechanisms and social movements from around the world relating to a survivor's role and as such- their agency. It unpacks various conceptual frameworks as possible alternative, effective and strategic pathways in torture rehabilitation. Ongoing and new challenges such as resourcing, cultural adaptability limitations, lack of access to services and inhumane foreign policies pose barriers to established systems that render some practices inadequate in terms of meaningful service delivery or social impact for torture survivors (Wheildon et al...