Credit: Photo by Anadolu Agency/Getty; Intervened with crayon, aquarelle and texts by Marcelo Brodsky, 2021
Justice
Torture is an international crime, prohibited absolutely, everywhere and always. It should never occur. Justice means first and foremost that no person anywhere is subjected to torture. This should happen because all States are obligated to prevent torture.
Unfortunately, at least 141 States continue to practice torture. Knowing it to be a crime, officials usually deny it has occurred and obstruct attempts to investigate. Thus, torture is not only severe pain or suffering. It’s also censorship. Silencing survivors ensures the continuation of impunity.
For IRCT, the first step to ending impunity and allowing survivors to participate in justice processes is to break that silence by credibly >Exposing Torture whenever and wherever it occurs. Next, >Strengthening Laws provides the means to prevent torture recurring. Finally, >Building Capacity in State actors and civil society ensures anti-torture laws can be implemented, and when broken, torture is investigated and justice prevails.
Credit: Andrew Boydston, Shutterstock /protesters calling for Justice, Michigan, USA 2020
“We are putting a puzzle together based on medical and material evidence, that’s the role of forensic Scientists.”
Exposing Torture
Breaking the silence, compelling an acknowledgement that torture has occurred, is the essential first step to making States change their behaviour. The IRCT works with other leading campaigning, legal and human rights organisations to leverage forensic evidence, which can be used to expose torture and hold perpetrators accountable through public advocacy and strategic litigation.
We also focus on exposing torture practices that are widely prevalent and should be banned, such as conversion therapy and forced anal examinations, as well as exposing the international trade in tools used for torture.
The International Forensic Expert Group (IFEG) was officially established by the IRCT in 2012 as part of its mission to be an international hub of expertise on torture investigation and documentation, IFEG is an organisation of 42 distinguished experts from 23 countries specialised in the evaluation of torture and ill-treatment cases.
IFEG members have testified in court and other forums over 4,500 times and have conducted some 2,000 trainings on torture and the Istanbul Protocol
IFEG members have a range of medical and mental health specialisations, including in medicine, psychology, psychiatry, pathology, forensic anthropology, and psychotherapy. Together they represent over 600 years of experience and have examined more than 40,000 victims of torture. Through the IRCT’s Istanbul Protocol Programme Coordinator, IFEG members undertake medico-legal evaluations, examining persons who allege they have suffered torture.
Read more about IFEG here.
Learn about the IRCT’s Independent Forensic Expert Group here.
Strengthening Laws
Once torture has been credibly exposed, State perpetrators can no longer deny it is taking place and victims should no longer be left without access to justice and reparations, including their right to rehabilitation.
An important aspect for IRCT’s mission to eradicate torture is ensuring that national anti-torture laws and government policy comply with international standards. This change starts and ends at the national level where the IRCT and its members are leading advocates for change. By working with its members during reviews of their States by the UN Committee Against Torture the body that monitors implementation of the Convention Against Torture (CAT), and the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review both located in Geneva, the IRCT can advocate for strengthening national anti-torture laws and policies to reflect the perspectives and experiences of survivors. We also advocate directly with UN and regional human rights mechanisms to develop strong international anti-torture standards that reflect the perspectives and experiences of survivors.
The flag alley at the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva
What is the Universal Periodic Review?
Started in 2008, the UPR is a unique process in International Human Rights Law: A review of all 193 UN Member States on their human rights records – regardless of which human rights treaties the State in question has ratified or not – convened by the elected State-members of the Human Rights Council and involving diplomats from any and all other UN Member States.
It’s a big process! Much like the treaty monitoring procedure of CAT, the UPR allows IRCT members to advocate for stronger anti-torture laws and policy through their written input and direct advocacy with diplomats conducting the review. The final outcome of the UPR is a series of recommendations from States participating in the review, which are then either accepted or simply noted by the State under review. The UPR process has now completed its third cycle, meaning all States have been reviewed three times.
Advocating at the Committee
Treaty rules require that State parties to the UN Convention Against Torture (CAT) submit a written report on how they are preventing torture and providing rehabilitation to its survivors to the Committee Against Torture every four years. The Committee, which is made up of ten independent experts, then uses the report to question officials from that State during two days of hearings at the UN headquarters in Geneva, before issuing a series of recommendations to the State. Civil society groups, like IRCT members, can also submit reports to the Committee for consideration, to inform its questions and recommendations.
Most recently, the IRCT helped its members from Honduras (CPTRT), Iraq (Jiyan Foundation for Human Rights), Chile (Cintras), Uganda (ACTV), Burundi (SAPGL), Colombia (CAPS), Egypt (El Nadeem Centre), and Spain (Sir[a]). Earlier IRCT likewise helped its members from Bolivia (IETI) Kyrgyzstan (Golos Svobody), Nigeria (PRAWA) and Serbia (IAN) to secure what we considered strong and focused recommendations from the Committee during its review of those States. As a result, the recommendations effectively reinforce key advocacy priorities of IRCT members in those countries. IRCT support included capacity development on UN advocacy and support with writing national advocacy reports and engaging with the Committee in Geneva.
“To many of the survivors, really, they believe that complete rehabilitation also encompasses a successful prosecution of the perpetrator.”
Building Capacity – Tools and Training
Neither exposing torture nor strengthening anti-torture laws would be possible without an active and healthy civil society. Although every member offers professional medical services, IRCT members are also civil society organisations (CSOs) and human rights defenders occupying a public space.
Strengthening the capacity of CSOs through tools and training strengthens the ability of people to have their voices heard by those in power, a crucial means of advocacy to achieve the goal of increased State accountability and justice for survivors of torture.
In 2023 IRCT conducted a three-day online training on investigation of torture with 100 participants from the Philippine Departments of Justice, Social Welfare, and Health, as well as the Commission on Human Rights and CSOs. As well as in Austria, South Africa, Germany, Libya, Poland, and Nigeria.
Online Training in the Istanbul Protocol
Becoming an official UN document in 1999 and revised in 2022, the Istanbul Protocol is the internationally agreed set of best-practice standards that States must follow in investigating torture and by which health and legal professionals should evaluate allegations of torture, document the cases of survivors and produce quality evidence.
In 2024, IRCT conducted a series of extensive in-person training missions to support members and civil society to document torture in Latin America, responding to the wave of police brutality against protesters over recent years.
IRCT works to strengthen Civil society through in-person training in the istanbul protocol
“One of the big problems in Nigeria is that State security actors actually use torture as a crime solving tool.”
Breakthrough Year: Improved Policy on Torture
With our partners in OMCT, IRCT in 2024 worked with our joint member Prevention, Treatment and Rehabilitation Centre for Survivors of Torture and Relatives (CPTRT) during a one week advocacy mission in Geneva ahead of its UNCAT review. Following recommendations made by UNCAT to Honduras, the Honduran Government accepted that UNCAT can receive and decide on individual complaints of torture, as set out in Articles 21 and 22 of the Convention. Read more here.
Years of advocacy support to our member Jiyan Foundation for Human Rights, including a report to the UN OHCHR and mission to Geneva ahead of Iraq’s 4th UPR, resulted in the production of a protocol for monitoring State implementation of the national reparations programme for Yazidi torture survivors, launched at an event in Erbil attended by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture in June 2024. The need to strengthen international law to address sexual violence in conflict as torture was set out in the first thematic report on the subject by a UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. The report focused extensively on issues that IRCT and members contributed.
The advocacy mission to Geneva with IRCT member Cintras ahead of Chile’s UPR review included a first of its kind: In place of the standard civil society statement, IRCT and Cintras produced a video with Chilean actress María Paz Grandjean who was shot in the face by police during their crackdown on protests in 2019. The video, in which Grandjean calls on Chile and HRC members States to live up to their obligations for reparations to victims of torture, was played in the Human Rights Council, another step along the road to IRCT’s goal of making sure survivor voices are heard by decision makers in the UN human rights system.
In 2024, torture returned to Georgia. In April, mass peaceful protests were met by a brutal police crackdown. Over several weeks, at least 300 protesters were arrested, with dozens severely beaten by masked police during arrest and detention.
Responding rapidly to the need for strong evidence gathering, IRCT-IFEG was able to conduct a two-week joint mission in support of IRCT member GCRT and its national partners Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA) and the Human Rights Center. Read more here.
Beaten, suffocated, drowned, sexually assaulted and set on fire by the Philippine Army’s Special Operation Task Force-Basilan, Abdul-Khan Ajid, a baker, was saved from despair by the support of Balay, while evidence of his torture was documented by MAG.
Together, IRCT’s two members in the Philippines worked for 12 years to support Ajid, whose case resulted, in August 2023, in only the second-ever criminal conviction under the country’s Anti-Torture Act. Read more here.
In the Nigerian capital Abuja, the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) ruled on the 10th July 2024 that, “the evidence before it establishes a state of fear and anxiety and psychological distress that amounts to torture, perpetrated by the disproportionate acts of the Respondent’s agents”.
The evidence accepted were medico-legal reports produced by IFEG documenting the physical and psychological impacts on three witnesses to the massacre of protesters at the Lekki Tollgate in Lagos in 2020. Read more here.
