Last January 2023, 36 international jurists, journalists and pol-iticians from 8 countries were part of the International Delega-tion Against Isolation that travelled to Turkey to hold meetings with civil society organisations and political circles regarding the prison situation1 . The Delegation was divided into three groups travelling to different cities: Ankara, Amed and Istan-bul. The three groups met on 28 January in Istanbul for an International Forum against Isolation.
This paper examines the implementation of the Global Standards on Rehabilitation (GSR) by members of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) and their impact on the quality of rehabilitation services provided to torture survivors. Methods: Qualitative and quantitative data were collected through surveys, post-training evaluations, and member feedback to assess the impact of the GSR on rehabilitation practices. Findings: Results show significant improvements, including more holistic rehabilitation, increased survivor participation, and stronger advocacy. Key challenges such as resource limitations, political barriers, and resistance to change were identified, alongside recommendations for future focus on survivor engagement, holistic support, and staff training. The paper concludes that the GSR roll-out has strengthened the capacity of IRCT members to provide quality rehabilitation services, highlighting the need for continued support and sustainable funding to expand impact.
Introduction: The article examines the experiences of protesters and bystanders who have sustained eye injuries from rubber bullets fired by the police. Use of rubber bullets by police officers during public protests is officially regulated, but there is insufficient documentation about the nature of fatal and non-fatal injuries linked to rubber bullet use during protests in South Africa.
Methods: We pres-ent three case studies based on data gathered from student protests, community protests, and media reports. Through the analysis of these sources, the article presents the personal stories of individuals who have experienced eye injuries, detailing how the incidents occurred and the subsequent impact on their lives. It also examines the accessibility of medical, psychological, and legal services available to victims in addressing the consequences of these injuries.
Results: The cases studies illustrate that rubber bullets were used frequently and often without due caution by police officers during the events examined. The use of rubber bullets was linked to numerous eye injuries, resulting in lasting psycho-logical and physical consequences for those affected.
Discussion: Rubber bullet-related eye injuries during protests are disturbingly common in South Africa. Consequently, there is an urgent need to provide essential services and support to those who suffer from these life-altering incidents.
Introduction: From 1996 to 2006, Nepal experienced a decade-long armed conflict that adversely impacted survivors of torture. The conflict posed threats to various facets of their lives, such as men-tal health, socio-economic status, human rights, and the process of reintegration into their original communities. This study was done with the survivors of torture from the armed conflict.
Objective: This study aims to generate evidence on the impact of livelihood support (supporting individuals with earning their livelihood through business development, farming/animal husbandry and mi-cro-entrepreneurship) upon mental health and psychosocial wellbeing as well as social empower-ment of survivors of torture.
Results: In total, 44 out of 46 torture survivors reported improvement in their mental health and psychosocial well-being after the livelihood intervention was instituted. Significant reduction in the severity of symptoms of depression (21.7% to 2.3%), anxiety (15.2% to 6.8%), and post-traumatic stress disorder (44.4% to 4.5%) was observed with medium to high effect size. Similarly, improvement in social relationship, economic status, and autonomy (increase in self-confidence and motivation) were noticed post-intervention.
Discussion and conclusion: Our study concludes that the livelihood intervention has significantly contributed to economic uplift, improved mental health, psychosocial well-being, social empowerment and quality of life among the survivors of torture. The data provide preliminary evidence of positive outcomes from integrating a livelihood program into an MHPSS (Mental Health and Psychosocial Support) program. Although the lack of a control group prevents us from isolating the specific impacts of the livelihood program, our qualitative data indicate that the intervention is well-received, culturally rel-evant, and promising. The study has yielded certain recommendations for further research.
Introduction: In October 2019 in Chile, massive protests broke out in the so-called social uprising. The repressive response of the armed forces and Carabineros (Police) resulted in serious and mas-sive violations of human rights, with between 400 and 500 victims of ocular trauma caused mainly by shots from anti-riot shotguns, constituting the largest number of cases in the world linked to a single event. It is proposed to evaluate the different dimensions of the impact of ocular trauma due to state violence, using the concept of psychosocial trauma and a support model that integrates the medical-psychological and social dimensions.
Methods: Human rights violations of the period are described, focusing on cases of ocular trauma, and state and civil society responses. The requests of a survivors' organisations regarding truth, justice and reparation is presented. A clinical case of ocular trauma treated in our centre is analyzed.
Results: Survivors of ocular trauma manifest post-traumatic reactions regardless of the severity of their ocular injuries. The impact on the mental health of survi-vors of ocular trauma due to state violence is a phenomenon where the psychic and psychosocial im-pact of trauma due to socio-political violence intersects with the short- and long-term mental health effects.
Discussion: The impact of sociopolitical trauma must be understood considering both the in-dividual and social subject, considering their cultural, socioeconomic and political reality. Recovery from traumatic psychological injury must be addressed in its medical, sensory rehabilitation, psycho-logical and psychosocial dimensions, including processes of social recognition, search for justice and comprehensive reparation of damage. In contexts of impunity, a model is proposed that integrates rehabilitation with psycho-legal support, promotion of agency and organisation, within the frame-work of commitment to the movement and principles of human rights.
The collective action of MOCAO, Movimiento en resistencia contra las agresiones oculares del ESMAD (Escuadrón Móvil An-tidisturbios) is a social strateg y to demand access to justice and the fulfilment of guarantees of reparation and non-repetition in Colombia. A brief account of significant events in our trajecto-ry as a social movement is presented, together with our letter of petitions to the national government as victims and survivors of ocular aggressions in the framework of police violence. Al-though ESMAD today has been reformed under the name of the Unit for Dialogue and Maintenance of Order (UNDMO), we consider that there have not yet been structural changes to ensure that its function is related to protecting the constitution-al right to social protest.
Background: Children all over the world are subjected to torture, but few are identified as victims of these actions. Knowledge that facilitates identification, documentation, and treatment of torture injuries in children can allow redress and rehabilitation for more children in need.
Objective: To synthesise research regarding screening, documentation, and treatment of child survivors of torture.
Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted. A total of 4795 titles and/or abstracts were screened, of which 80 articles were included. Grey literature was also included.
Results: Screening for torture exposure usually consisted of questions that were included in trauma questionnaires. Questions about perpetrators in the traumatic events were missing from more than half of the studies. Although children were screened mainly for psychological injuries, it was primarily physical injuries that were documented. The evidence on treatment effects was limited. However, there was a tendency that Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) and Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) significantly reduced PTSD up to three months to one year after the end of treatment. Treatments with individual and group-based formats, as well as those with normal and more intensified approaches, were found to have an effect on PTSD.
This article describes the incarcerated population in Australia and the US as being comprised of peo-ple primarily from racialised and marginalised communities, of whom many have histories of trauma. It is argued that their pre-existing trauma is compounded by trauma arising from both deprivation of liberty in and of itself, and their treatment and conditions in prison. The article compares and draws parallels between rehabilitation as understood under the UN Convention against Tortureand Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment with rehabilitation as an objective of the criminal legal system, arguing for the need for the criminal legal system to refocus from reducing reoffending to pursuing healing. The article argues that contemporary prison labour in Australia and the US should be analysed in the context of historical slavery and forced labour. It considers the different objectives of prison labour, concluding that it is not feasible to effectively achieve multiple objectives (e.g. rehabilitation versus recouping State costs associated with incarceration). The signifi-cant risk that prison labour as it currently operates can amount to exploitative or degrading treatment is explored in the article, which argues that international legal protections need to be strengthened. The article also recommends that there needs to be improved transparency and research regarding the use and effectiveness of prison labour in these jurisdictions (and more broadly) in achieving rehabili-tation, particularly livelihoods in the community, after release from prison.
Introduction: In order to identify the efficacy of treatment interventions for trauma-affected refugees follow-up studies are highly warranted. Hence, the overall aim of this study was to examine the effi-cacy of sleep-enhancing treatment, IRT and mianserin, in a sample of 219 trauma-affected refugees at six-month follow-up post-treatment.
Methods: Data were derived from a four-armed randomized controlled trial in a sample of trauma-affected refugees with PTSD. All four arms received Treatment as Usual (TAU), an interdisciplinary treatment approach: one group received solely TAU, serving as a control group, whereas the remaining three groups were active-treatment groups receiving add-on treatment with either IRT, mianserin, or a combination. Mixed models were used to analyze the combinations of the two treatment factors (IRT vs. non-IRT and mianserin vs non-mianserin) and time (baseline vs follow-up and post-treatment vs follow-up) for the primary outcome sleep quality and for several secondary outcome measures.
Results: A total of 36.7% of the participants had been exposed to torture and 44% had been imprisoned. The only significant effect of IRT was on well-be-ing (measured with WHO-5), where IRT showed higher improvement in well-being six months post-treatment (p =.027). There was no significant effect of mianserin on any of the outcome mea-sures.
Discussion: This follow-up study found improvements from baseline to post-treatment on sleep quality and most of the secondary outcome measures that were maintained for all treatment condi-tions at the six-month follow-up assessment. A limitation of the study was that a high proportion (53.4%) of the participants did not attend the follow-up evaluation. The results indicate that add-on IRT-treatment and add-on mianserin-treatment were not superior to TAU at six-month follow-up post-treatment.
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：