organisations in over 70 countries, making it the largest membership-based civil
society organisation to work in the field of torture rehabilitation and prevention.
As a membership organisation, IRCT’s members are the focal point for the work
of the organisation. Members provide expert knowledge and experience of working with
victims of torture in diverse environments. The IRCT Secretariat supports the membership
to develop the organisation’s strategy, policy framework and project-led work.
IRCT’s work supporting torture victims
participating in justice
IRCT’s members work within diverse regional, national and local contexts and within
varied economic, cultural and political environments. The members offer rehabilitation
programmes that are oriented towards different target groups and use various
methods to address the effects of torture on individuals, families and communities.
All of IRCT’s members featured in this report have extensive experience of
assisting torture victims involved in legal proceedings and in particular in identifying
and responding to their medical and psychological needs so as to ensure that
appropriate psychosocial support is offered and that re-traumatisation through their
participation in the legal process is mitigated as much as possible.
The 37 members featured in the report come from Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin
America and the Middle East and North Africa region. The rehabilitation centres
involved have varied resource capacities and degrees of expertise associated with the
provision of psychosocial support to torture victims involved in legal proceedings.
Most of IRCT’s members in this report assist torture victims in criminal proceedings
against the alleged perpetrator(s) of the torture. A large number of these rehabilitation
centres also assist victims involved in civil proceedings (e.g. compensation claims against
the state) and administrative proceedings (where the state’s responsibility is being
challenged). A small number of the rehabilitation centres have experience supporting
torture victims involved in international or regional human rights proceedings, for
example before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the
European Court for Human Rights (e.g. the members in Turkey and Moldova), the InterAmerican Commission for Human Rights and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts
of Cambodia (ECCC), a United Nations-backed Tribunal.
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