Diploma course on prevention and documentation of torture in Mexico
capable of covering the tuition fee (€633). The Prosecutor General’s Office of Distrito Federal offered to fund the course but
this offer was rejected to avoid the CCTI gaining a reputation
as a prosecutor or police trainers. Instead the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims financed the course.
Strong links between CCTI and other social organisations
was an important factor in the success of the first diploma
course. A significant number of the participants in the first
course were either professionals from these organisations or
sympathisers. This allowed the course to develop with wide
and varied interventions despite the heterogeneous nature of
the group.
A second diploma course (200 hours) started in November
2008 in the Faculty of Medicine of the Autonomous University
of Guerrero, Campus Acapulco, where the CCTI maintains good
relations with the university and has the support of a CCTI unit
in the city.
Although the CCTI hopes that some of the graduates will
join the organisation or will form other organisations working
on eradicating torture, it is still too early to make credible
impact assessments. Another positive outcome of the efforts
to provide academic training in torture documentation was
the tutorial training of a forensic physician from Bolivia, a colleague from the Latin American Network (Red Latinoamericana). This training has also provided a diploma from the Metropolitan Autonomous University based on the completion of a
distance learning education combined with practical experience in Mexico.
One of the main future challenges is going beyond the
basic level of the first course, aiming on educating truly qualified experts in torture documentation. It is thus necessary
to supplement the teaching activity with practice, through a
teaching tutorial programme. Another challenge is to obtain
international academic validation, to be able to verify that
the graduates are qualified experts, even if they are not recognised by the Mexican authorities. The CCTI also considers a
challenge the inclusion of the torture topic into the curricular
subjects of forensic medicine and psychiatry.
The threat of criminalization of the experts is permanent.
Judicial proceedings have already been launched against the
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