Reaching the wider professional community Of the utmost importance is making best practice in forensic documentation in cases of torture allegations available to the wider scientific community. Simply put, more health and legal professionals must have the awareness, knowledge and skills to conduct such specialised and critical examinations and reports and know how to use them in legal proceedings. As such, members of the International Forensic Experts Group (IFEG), the IRCT Secretariat and other forensic experts working in the field of human rights attend and speak at conferences on related subjects in order to expand the knowledge to the wider community of medical and legal professionals. For example, held once every three years, the International Association of Forensic Sciences (IAFS) meeting and conference is the largest of its kind in the world, gathering approximately 1,600 forensic pathologists, academics and other practitioners of forensic science. The documentation of torture featured prominently at the IAFS global conference in 2011 where the IRCT had the opportunity to hold several seminars on the issue in addition to being represented at the conference plenary. At the conference, the IRCT also awarded Maria Dolores Morcillo-Méndez, a forensic medical doctor with the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences in Bogota, Colombia, an award for the best human rights or torture related presentation. Challenges are that, one, very few doctors do document cases of human rights violations. Second, if they do documentation, there are deficiencies in their documentation, meaning they don’t document diligently. And third, some doctors don’t even participate in this kind of documentation, and they don’t even know that there is already a document called the Istanbul Protocol in the Philippines. — Edeliza Hernandez, Medical Action Group, the Philippines I think that human rights and torture issues have increased massively in visibility in this kind of big international meeting in the forensic medicine area. I have been so impressed and pleased that the forensic world has truly welcomed the inclusion of human rights and torture investigations in their programmes and meetings. Ten years ago this was not the case. And it indeed makes me optimistic for the future. — Önder Özkalipçi, IRCT’s former Senior Forensic Advisor Getting the evidence: Countering torture through medico-legal documentation 15