Announcements

CALLING FOR PAPERS!

2022-06-13

CALL 1: INTEGRATING LIVELIHOODS INTO REHABILITATION

Pau Pérez-Sales, Editor-in-Chief
Berta Soley Daró, Guest Editor & Editorial Associate

Background

There is an on-going discussion about the need for a holistic approach to torture rehabilitation, claiming that psychosocial and medical services are not effective if basic needs remain uncovered. Mental and physical health has been a primary focus of rehabilitation programmes, but many found that progress was difficult to maintain without socio-economic support as well. Survivors still have households to feed, battled unemployment and disabilities caused by the atrocities committed against them.

Recognising the complexity and inter-connectivity of social, economic, medical and psychological sequelae of torture, where one aspect can negatively or positively affect the other, this special edition of the Torture Journal seeks to explore how the integration of rebuilding a life project and the livelihood’s component can influence rehabilitation processes. Indeed, additional academic contributions are required to better understand how healing processes can be enhanced by including socio-economic support in rehabilitation programmes.

Call for papers

The Torture Journal encourages authors to submit papers with a psychological, medical or legal orientation, particularly those that are interdisciplinary with other fields of knowledge. We welcome papers on the following:

  1. Defining livelihoods and its relationship with the concept of development in the context of the work with torture survivors. Going beyond a definition centred in material outcomes and working with the idea of life projects and finding meaning as part of the work with torture survivors.
  2. Survivor participation in the design and implementation of livelihoods programs
  3. Innovative experiences in livelihoods programs: evolving from a business perspective to livelihoods programmes for social change.
  4. Transcending the individual or family perspective: from cooperatives to collective forms of organisation in livelihoods programmes.
  5. Beyond vulnerability: innovative approaches to resource allocation in precarious environments.
  6. Ensuring sustainability of livelihood programs. The role of the State and civil society.
  7. Working in unstable contexts: livelihoods programs under conflict situations.
  8. Barriers to livelihoods programmes: limitations to work and employment integration in asylum seekers and refugees.
  9. Transnational experiences connecting refugees, relatives and comrades in the country of origin.
  10. Effects on the overall well-being and quality of life resulting from the integration of a socioeconomic component into the rehabilitation processes.

Deadline for submission: 15th February 2024

Submission guidelines and links:
• Submit your paper here: https://tidsskrift.dk/torture-journal/about/submissions
• Author guidelines can be found here: https://irct.org/uploads/media/2eefc4b785f87c7c3028a1c-
59ccd06ed.pdf
• Read more about the Torture Journal here: https://irct.org/global-resources/torture-journal
• For general submission guidelines, please see the Torture Journal website. Papers will be selected
on their relevance to the field, applicability, methodological rigor, and level of innovation.

For more information:
Contact Editor-in-chief (pauperez@runbox.com) if you wish to explore the suitability of a paper
to the Special Section.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

CALL 2: TORTURE IN PRISON AND OTHER DETENTION FACILITIES

Pau Pérez Sales, Editor-in-Chief, Torture Journal

About the call

This call for papers aims to examine prisons and other detention facilities (immigration detention centres, juvenile detention centres, etc) as torturing environments

Torture Journal encourages authors to submit papers with a psychological, medical or legal orientation, particularly those that are interdisciplinary with other fields of knowledge. We welcome contributions related (but not limited) to:

  1. Conditions of detention as environments of torture: overcrowding, food, inhuman treatment, etc.
  2. Carceral geographies: emotional cartographies in detention spaces.
  3. Impacts of isolation and closed regime units. Alternatives.
  4. Use of mechanical restraints, chemical restraints and other methods of control and coercion. Intervention programs to abolish restraints.
  5. Challenges of forensic documentation in prisons and other closed institutions.
  6. Studies on reprisals against persons deprived of their liberty following monitoring visits to investigate allegations of torture.
  7. Violent institutional cultures. Generating and perpetuating factors, and intervention programmes on violent milieus.
  8. Violence by other inmates and staff. Methods of detection and prevention.
  9. Effectiveness of torture prevention measures: videotaping, civil-society monitoring, medical documentation of injuries and others
  10. Sexual torture and abuse in closed institutions.
  11. Short or adapted forms of the Istanbul Protocol for documenting torture during monitoring visits or short-time evaluations in closed institutions.
  12. Self-harm and suicide. Self-inflicted violence in closed institutions.
  13. Severe Mental Illness and Torture in closed institutions.
  14. Legal contours of torture in detention centres: legal reviews with a special focus on the intentionality and purpose criteria

Deadline for submission: 15th March 2024

Submission guidelines and links

For more information

Contact Editor-in-chief (pauperez@runbox.com) if you wish to explore the suitability of a paper to the Special Section.

About the Torture Journal

Please go to our website (https://tidsskrift.dk/torture-journal) devoted to Torture Journal readers and contributors – to access the latest and archived issues

Read more about CALLING FOR PAPERS!

Current Issue

Vol. 34 No. 1 (2024): Torture Journal: Journal on Rehabilitaiton of Torture Victims and Prevention of Torture
View Vol. 34 No. 1 (2024): Torture Journal: Journal on Rehabilitaiton of Torture Victims and Prevention of Torture

This issue features a special section on the use of less lethal weapons and in particular the use of kinetic energy projectiles as a form of ill-treatment or torture.

Pau Pérez-Sales introduces this issue with an Editorial that reviews the specificities and complexities of strategic litigation in the cases of ocular injuries by less-lethal weapons, with a focus on the challenges of collecting evidence during and after the injury event, building on the Istanbul Protocol's medical and psychiatric assessments. It also explores possible litigation venues for human rights organisations and provides guidance on the ophthalmological, medical, psychological, psychometric and psychosocial aspects of evidence-gathering. 

Matthew McEvoy, Neil Corney, Marina Parras and Rohini Haar present a comprehensive review of the state of the art from a medico-legal perspective based on Omega Foundation’s experience.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Edwards, recalls from her recent report to the UN General Assembly the existence of instruments that are inherently constitutive of torture concerning the use of less lethal weapons, and calls, in her contribution to the Journal, for their international prohibition.

Marie Brasholt and the Dignity medical team present a comprehensive review based on case studies published in the literature on the health impacts of electric shock weapons. This goes hand in hand with the Editorial, which comprehensively reviews elements related to the litigation of cases and, especially, the forensic assessment of eye injuries based on the Istanbul Protocol. 

The reviews are followed by case studies with articles by Malose Langa and colleagues (South Africa), Jose Tejada and colleagues (Chile), Anaïs Franquesa and colleagues (Spain), and the MOCAO survivor’s organisation (Colombia). These contributions reflect the perspectives of the survivors and the enormous legal, medical and psychosocial difficulties faced by victims in all these countries.

In the Perspectives section, Carles Guillot provides a first-person testimony of his struggle as a victim of traumatic eye injury and the endeavours of the collective he represents. 

Within the regular articles section, Jörg Alfred Stippel presents a review of cases of ill-treatment and torture in the Chilean penal system and Justine Dee a review of evidence-based physical therapies in torture survivors. 

Finally, the issue closes with a couple of contributions on the situation of solitary confinement in Turkey based on a visit of a delegation of experts to the country, the situation of the high-security internationally contested prison system in El Salvador by Professor Lutz Oette, the situation of mentally ill persons in prisons in Kosovo by Niman Hajdari, and a letter by Andres Gautier on the situation in the occupied territories of Palestine. 

The use of less lethal weapons as a form of ill-treatment or torture is probably one of the most comprehensive and complex issues to have emerged in the field in recent years and we are proud of the important role played by survivors in many of the articles we publish: Undoubtedly a distinct element that we want to maintain and enhance in the future.

Published: 2024-05-28

Full Issue

Editorial

Review articles

Special Section: Less-Lethal Weapons

Research and Scientific articles

Perspectives

News

Letter to the Editor

View All Issues

PLEASE NOTE: A new website for the Torture Journal is under construction.

The Torture Journal is an international scientific journal that provides an interdisciplinary forum for the exchange of original research and systematic reviews by professionals concerned with the biomedical, psychological and social interface of torture and the rehabilitation of its survivors.