Torture : quarterly journal on rehabilitation of torture victims and prevention of torture最新文献

Introduction: The concept of 'life project' is at the core of several decisions in the inter-American human rights system. The concept has also become part of the legal consciousness of torture survivors in Peru and is often referred to when they describe the impact of torture and imprisonment on their lives and on the lives of their children.

Methods: The paper is based on qualitative interviews with seven Peruvian torture survivors.

Results: The concept of 'life project' has been included in the legal consciousness of torture survivors in in Peru, and is used to address the ways in which torture and imprisonment has impacted not only on the life project of the person targeted, but also on the lives of their children. The interviewees describe damage to their life project both regarding health and the impact of stigma, but place special emphasis on the ways in which the life projects of their children have been impacted: as a result of being imprisoned, they have been unable to take care of their children for longer periods of time, their children have been subjected to violence, and they have had less access to education. Still, the interviewees describe how they reconstruct their life projects, as well as how the concept of life project serves as a starting point for demanding reparations.

Discussion: The concept of "life project", originating from the inter American Court of Human Rihgts, is useful for grasping how peoples' lives are impacted by imprisonment and torture, and has become part of the legal consciousness of persons affected by serious and systematic human rights violations in Peru.

After years of legal battles, three Iraqi survivors of torture in the Abu Ghraib prison have secured justice in a historic victory in U.S. courts. The jury ruled in favour of the Iraqi plaintiffs, holding a private contractor, CACI, accountable for its role in the abuse and torture of detainees during the Iraq War.

Ntroduction: The use of threats remains prev-alent in law enforcement practices in many parts of the world. In studies with torture sur-vivors, credible and immediate threats have been considered a distinctly harmful method of torture. Notwithstanding this prevalence, there is a considerable degree of difficulty in legally substantiating and establishing harms produced by threatening acts. It is also gen-erally difficult to clearly identify the harms that go beyond the fear and stress inherent (therefore not unlawful) in law enforcement practices. We present a Protocol on Medico-Legal Documentation of Threats. The aim of the Protocol is to improve documentation and assessment of harms so that stronger legal claims can be submitted to local and interna-tional complaints mechanisms.

Methods: The Protocol has been developed based on a methodology initiated by the Public Committee against Torture in Israel (PCATI), REDRESS and the DIGNITY - Danish In-stitute against Torture (DIGNITY) involving: compilation and review of health and legal knowledge on threats; initial drafting by the lead author; discussion among the members of the International Expert Group on Psycholog-ical Torture; pilot-testing in Ukraine by local NGO Forpost; adjustments were made ac-cording to the results of the pilot study.

Results: We present the final Protocol and a Quick Interviewing Guide. This Protocol is cognisant of the significance of the specific social, cultural, and political contexts in which threats are made and might be subjected to ad-aptations to specific contexts. We hope that it will improve the documentation of threats as a torture method or as part of a torturing en-vironment, as well as inform efforts on their prevention more broadly.

As the exposure to state violence could have long-term negative consequences on the survivors, we analyzed which optics and measures could be used regardless of the vulnerabilities of the individual, their social status and institutional context. We examine the ways in which law enforcement system challenges individuals and measures used to practice resilience.We use the concept of resilience within torturing environment to achieve our goal. Various actors of Russian law enforcement and penitentiary systems - detainees and pris-oners, their family members, human rights activists, state agents etc. - participated in semi-structured in-depth interviews, which we coded basing on grounded theory.Measures employed by survivors to exer-cise resilience involve regaining bodily control (both by exercise and self-harm), having pro-jections for future (by threats of legal prose-cution or publicity), exploiting bureaucracy to one's advantage, controlling information flow (by bluffing), controlling material evidence, employing allies and preserving the meaning of "normal self ".We believe that our findings can have prac-tical applications, e.g. for preventing some of the negative consequences of torture by train-ing vulnerable individuals to employ resilient strategies. Describing the way to interpret the power imbalances inherent to the torture en-vironment might also be helpful for appre-ciating even the smallest acts, including the choice not to act.

This paper presents learnings from trauma recovery mechanisms and social movements from around the world relating to a survivor's role and as such- their agency. It unpacks various conceptual frameworks as possible alternative, effective and strategic pathways in torture rehabilitation. Ongoing and new challenges such as resourcing, cultural adaptability limitations, lack of access to services and inhumane foreign policies pose barriers to established systems that render some practices inadequate in terms of meaningful service delivery or social impact for torture survivors (Wheildon et al., 2022, p. 1689). It is well documented that "Torture aims to dehumanise survivors through calculated acts of cruelty to remove the survivors' dignity and make them powerless." (Luci and Di Rado, 2020, p. 3). As such this paper deliberately straddles multiple thematic fields, all grappling with relatable notions of restoring power or agency to survivors. At the risk of discursiveness into fields beyond torture rehabilitation then, this paper aims to showcase and learn from other successful movements. It also invites you as the reader into this discourse of inquiry and self-reflection, in order to counter the ten- dency of assuming a prescriptive, blanket (or blank) meaning of survivor engagement activities. Its findings suggest the manifestation of bespoke programming according to context and survivors' needs. It does not suggest a systematic overhaul, but rather a shift of incremental and cumulative changes that are recognised as advantageous. This paper deep dives into theories on agency, looking firstly at the broader archetypes that provide commonality and structure before then exploring particularities from different contexts. Implications for practice are then discussed, with nuances drawn out from the findings.

Historically, torture often was understood as physical and/or psychological pain inflicted by governmental agents on an individual who is detained or imprisoned in governmental custody. As defined by the United Nations Convention Against Torture (UNCAT), however, torture is increasingly recognized as occurring in settings far beyond carceral settings.