THEMATIC REPORT 2017 TORTURE AND MIGRATION This section will focus on the clients’ experiences of torture and the context in which it takes place. The data will illustrate the main trends in terms of torture methods used, perpetrator groups, locations of the torture incidents and the purpose for which the clients were tortured. Understanding the specific torture experiences and the context is an important element in providing adequate rehabilitation support and ensuring an effective evaluation of claims for protection against refoulement. The general country contexts vary greatly between the focus countries. In Mexico, the State itself is the main perpetrator of torture against migrants while in Cameroon and Uganda, the States are struggling to deal with recent refugee influxes due to political instability and armed conflict in their neighbouring regions. In Cameroon, there are over half a million refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons fleeing largely from conflict with Boko Haram in the Lake Chad basin and conflict in the Central African Republic. In Uganda, refugees are fleeing from political instability, persecution and conflict in Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Clients in Bosnia & Herzegovina are IDPs who were displaced during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, who are still heavily traumatised and are struggling to gain recourse to rights and compensation for the horrors they witnessed during the war. Finally, Serbia is largely a country of transit for refugees en route to the European Union, with many of IAN’s clients travelling towards the border with Hungary. Understanding the specific torture experiences and the context is an important element in providing adequate rehabilitation support and ensuring an effective evaluation of claims for protection. Photo on previous page: Silhouette of Nigerian woman in refugee camp, northern Cameroon by UK Mission to the UN/Lorey Campese via Creative Commons license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode page 19