THEMATIC REPORT 2017
TORTURE AND MIGRATION
METHODOLOGY
The IRCT member centres participating in
the DFI Project identified the topics of sexual
and gender-based violence, redress and
reparations and migration as the thematic
issues they wanted to examine through
the prism of their newly established client
databases.
Based on feedback from the IRCT member centres involved
in DFI and the relevance of the data they have collected,
centres from five countries were identified to be part of the
report on migration. The information in this report is based
on anonymised client data that the torture rehabilitation
centres recorded in their DFI database, an interview to
further explore the context and meaning of the data as well
as other related background information.
The data included in this report has been collected over a
short period of around 2 years. As the data set used in the
report is in its infancy, it is necessary to note a number of
limitations which impact on the degree of certainty reached
by the conclusions in this report. Firstly, the numbers of total
clients or of clients with a full dataset that were analysed is
low for all five IRCT members in the report. This is in part
due to the short period of the project as well as technical
issues that members may have experienced when updating
new versions of the database. However, it is also due to the
nature of the data entry process, whereby a client’s data
may be recorded over a number of different interactions
with the rehabilitation centre, and it may take some clients
longer than others to disclose sensitive information in the
course of their treatment. Secondly, there is a degree of
discrepancy in the way some of the data categories have
been interpreted by the IRCT members. However, where
this may have been the case, the IRCT members have either
clarified the specific context relevant to the data category,
or the data category has not been relied on in the report.
The conclusions drawn from the data highlight various
issues relating to the experiences and difficulties faced
by the 371 individuals whose data has been collected and
should not be seen as a claim to being a representative
sample of the situation of all victims of torture who have
been displaced or have migrated. These experiences merit
further examination through research and data analysis in
order to better understand the detailed and root causes
of the challenges and their geographical applicability and
relevance.
The information in this report is based on anonymised client
data that the torture rehabilitation centres recorded in their DFI
database, an interview to further explore the context and meaning
of the data as well as other related background information.
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