Key findings

The projects had multifarious focuses and outcomes, and the full range of findings can be found in Torture and Torturous Violence: Transcending Definitions of Torture. However, four key themes emerged across the research.

1. Survivors of violence are impacted by organisational definitions of torture

Organisations and institutions which use the narrow remit of the UNCAT can overlook extreme and sustained violence which is perpetrated by non-state actors (such as partners or family and community members). This has gendered implications for who is recognized as a survivor of ‘torture’, and so impacts on who can or cannot access post-torture support. For example, an organization which worked with survivors of state-inflicted torture in custody had a gendered ratio of 80% male clients to 20% female. Another which focused on the impacts of sustained violence and subsequent trauma (including during the migration process) reported a 60% male:40% female support access rate. However, it is worth stating that it can be very difficult for anyone to access support in the aftermath of torture, and so pathways to support are required for all survivors.

2. Harsh immigration policies compound the impact of previous violence, and restrict access to support

Many Northern European countries have implemented further restrictions on asylum and refugee rights, and continue plans to do so. These include decreased access to family reunification, decreased temporal protection for refugees who are given non-permanent status, and increased risks of detention and deportation for survivors seeking asylum. These have impacts on the emotional and psychological wellbeing of all refugees and people seeking asylum – it can be very difficult for survivors of torture and torturous violence to undertake journeys toward counselling or rehabilitative therapy if they are more concerned by serious immediate problems such as homelessness, or knowing family members are stuck at precarious borders or in war zones. A lack of security compounds impacts of earlier trauma for survivors of torture and torturous violence. It also actively facilitates harmful practices including economic, domestic and interpersonal violence.

‘They treat the refugees like animals, like wild animals, not pets. You can love pets, but not wild animals.’ (Mahira, survivor of domestic violence, domestic torture and false imprisonment, Denmark)

3. The closing of borders across Europe facilitates increased exposure to violence, and risky over sea and overland journeys are creating further forms of trauma

By creating more dangerous routes in closing safe passage, opportunities for violence to be inflicted open up through extended time spent in insecure spaces, time on the move, and in creating further dependence on partners or families for those subjected to interpersonal or domestic abuses that are torturous. Furthermore, from 2014 to date, more than 25,000 people are missing and presumed dead in the Mediterranean. As more people have continued to cross by sea, survivors and practitioners report trauma from the migratory journey itself, which safe passage would alleviate. This was a notable change in the interviews carried out after 2016.

‘A lot of people experience being wounded in war, being forced to witness relatives or close family being killed by bombs or by shootings or different kinds, and then during the flight can be different kinds of traumas from the boats across the Mediterranean and witnessing people die and being very, very terrified yourself on the boats, and being maltreated in the recipient countries. People can talk about the detention in Turkey or Greece as they’ve been very badly beaten and badly treated in the detention centres there. So that can also be part of the trauma.’ (Izabella, psychologist, 2021).

4. Negative impacts on practitioners are increasing as funding reduces and border control strategies expand

Increasingly punitive approaches to border controls in Northern Europe impact significantly on the way in which practitioners experience their roles, and pressures under which they work. This is particularly concerning given the pressured and complex field that torture support and prevention falls under, where practitioners already risk experiencing vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue.

Five key issues were raised by practitioners in this field:

1. Restrictive asylum law and policy negatively impacts on the role of practitioners;
2. Emotional and psychological issues in working with refugee groups are compounded by increasingly hostile socio-legal environments;
3. Practitioners report feelings of powerlessness, helplessness and a structural diminishment of their professional roles;
4. Roles are increasingly bureaucratised, and so practitioners report ‘managing expectations’ of clients rather than fulfilling their assigned role/profession;
5. Trust in state responses to migration is diminishing. This may then have consequences for survivors seeking support from practitioners whose roles and working conditions are being increasingly diminished by state-led border practices.