IRCT REGIONAL REPORT 2016 The early rehabilitation and treatment he received had a positive, stabilising impact on his mental health and clearly exemplifies the necessity of shortening waiting lists. Despite implementing obligations of the French authorities, most NGO service providers do not have sufficient capacity to meet the demand. The lack of funding from the French state is a serious problem and can only be improved by ensuring adequate and continuous budgetary allocation for these services. Torture victims who are not identified miss out on rehabilitation and cannot access crucial support measures to process their asylum request. This mainly relates to procedural safeguards that take account of their psychological traumatisation in the assessment of their asylum claim and access to a full medico-legal assessment of their torture allegations. But even when victims are identified, Parcours d’Exil has found that procedural safeguards are generally limited to very practical needs during the asylum interview – taking into account factors such as the gender of the interviewing personnel – but rarely the broader problems with the procedure itself. For instance, there is no automatic exclusion from accelerated asylum procedures for those identified as torture victims. The asylum seeker can submit additional evidence, such as an MLR if they have been tortured, to request being processed in the regular procedure but re-routing to the regular procedure does not occur automatically. MLRs can help victims credibly document their allegations of past torture as evidence for asylum proceedings. For many victims this evidence is an essential element in their claim for international protection. At present, the French authorities does not offer MLRs to asylum claimants. The newly implemented Asylum Law in France does provide the French authorities with the opportunity to refer asylum seekers to an organisation that can provide an MLR, however this has only been made available to girls and women who have experienced female genital mutilation. Instead, torture victims need to request support themselves from organisations with specialised expertise in producing MLRs. There are currently very few of these organisations and the quality of the MLRs they produce varies, as the reports are not based on a common standard such as the Istanbul Protocol. Asylum application in France, 2010 - 2015 Asylum applications in France, 2010 – 2015 80,000 70,570 70,000 60,100 60,000 54,900 50,000 40,000 47,800 59,000 51,900 30,000 20,000 10,000 0 2010 2011 2012 2013 page 19 2014 2015