Announcements

Items posted here are intended to be of particular relevance to subscribers and contributors to the Torture Journal. For more general news items on torture victims, please go to www.irct.org.

  • CALLING FOR PAPERS!

    2022-06-13

    CALL 1: PERSPECTIVES ON SURVIVOR ENGAGEMENT IN THE ANTI-TORTURE SECTOR

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

    Background

    Though the term ‘survivor engagement’ is itself contested, it generally entails processes or activities through which people who have undergone traumatic experiences become actively involved in efforts to address the causes or consequences of those experiences at a community or societal level.

    It is apparent that a considerable knowledge gap exists in relation to ‘survivor engagement’ in torture rehabilitation and advocacy. In particular, there is a paucity of research and documentation which examines the various approaches to and the effectiveness and ethical dilemmas of ‘survivor engagement’.

    In an effort to address this knowledge gap, the Torture Journal is issuing a call for papers.

    The objective is to gather and disseminate perspectives and experiences from researchers and practitioners on survivor engagement within the anti-torture sector. These are expected to help organisations engaged in the sector to understand what works and under what conditions.

     Call for papers

    The Torture Journal encourages authors to submit papers with a rehabilitation and/or legal orientation, particularly those that are interdisciplinary. We welcome papers on:

    1. What is ‘survivor engagement in an anti-torture or torture rehabilitation context’? The definition and the theoretical underpinnings of advocacy or health-based models
    2. Psychosocial and quality of life impact on survivors after participating in survivor engagement activities
    3. Stigma and other barriers to survivor engagement
    4. Re-traumatisation: risks and safeguards
    5. Advocacy engagement of people seeking asylum
    6. The role of healthcare workers and civil society organisations in supporting survivors to engage – balancing empowerment and duty of care
    7. Recommended practice in survivor engagement with mass media
    8. Mechanisms to support survivors to access decision-making roles in organisations addressing torture rehabilitation or legal reparation
    9. The impact of survivor engagement groups in community networks
    10. Gender-specific needs and gaps in participation

    Deadline for submission: 31st of March, 2023

    _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    CALL 2: 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 submissions: 31st of March, 2023

    ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    CALL 3: 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 submissions: 30th of June, 2023

     

    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!

  • CALL FOR PAPERS: Enforced Disappearances

    2020-11-16

    Call for papers

    Special section of Torture Journal: Journal on Rehabilitation of Torture Victims and Prevention of Torture

    Enforced Disappearances and Torture

    Pau Pérez Sales - Editor-in-Chief, Torture Journal
    Guest Editors: Mariana Castilla (Collective Against Torture and Impunity) & Bernard Duhaime (Université du Québec à Montréal, Member of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances)

    Read more about CALL FOR PAPERS: Enforced Disappearances

  • CALL FOR PAPERS: Continuous Traumatic Stress (CTS): An essential paradigm for understanding the experience and rehabilitation of torture survivors, or an unnecessary distraction?

    2020-06-11

    Continuous Traumatic Stress (CTS): An essential paradigm for understanding the experience and rehabilitation of torture survivors, or an unnecessary distraction?

    Read more about CALL FOR PAPERS: Continuous Traumatic Stress (CTS): An essential paradigm for understanding the experience and rehabilitation of torture survivors, or an unnecessary distraction?

  • Refugee Trauma Recovery in Resettlement Conference

    2017-10-25
    The conference is hosted by The Forum of Australian Services for Survivors of Torture and Trauma and the theme, Healing in Exile – Current and Future Challenges will explore the most innovative and successful ways to support people from refugee backgrounds as they recover from trauma and resettle in their new context. It will be held at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre from 27-29 March 2019. Read more about Refugee Trauma Recovery in Resettlement Conference

  • CALL FOR PAPERS - EXPIRED

    2017-09-28

    Forced Migration and Torture: challenges and solutions in rehabilitation and prevention
    Deadline for submissions: 31st December 2017.

    There has been increased pressure on public health systems and rehabilitation centers that work with torture survivors and traumatized forced migrants over the last few years, in Europe as well as globally. Massive population displacement over a short time challenges existing services and can threaten holistic rehabilitation treatment.

    Read more about CALL FOR PAPERS - EXPIRED

  • ISHHR 10th International Conference

    2017-04-07
    Readers may be interested in the International Society for Health and Human Rights 10th International Conference in the city of Novi Sad in Serbia, on the 26th-29th September 2017, “Mental health, mass people displacement and ethnic minorities”. Please see http://ishhr.com/ for more details. The Torture Journal particularly welcomes manuscripts arising from the conference presentations.  Read more about ISHHR 10th International Conference