Announcements

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!

Current Issue

Vol. 33 No. 1 (2023): Torture Journal: Journal on Rehabilitaiton of Torture Victims and Prevention of Torture
					View Vol. 33 No. 1 (2023): Torture Journal: Journal on Rehabilitaiton of Torture Victims and Prevention of Torture

What can you find in this issue?

Pau Pérez-Sales and Paula de la Fuente introduce this issue with a quick guide on detection and assessment of victims of torture and ill-treatment in Primary Health Care, incorporating the last advancements of the 2022 Istanbul Protocol.

The Editorial is followed by a section compiling research articles.

Jesús Silva presents a study that describes and classifies the type of torture and ill-treatment in the orofacial area of victims of political repression during the Chilean military dictatorship and relates them to the injuries registered in written reports. It also draws on the psychological impact for victims.

Andrea Galán et al., introduce an exploratory study on the quality of forensic assessments using the Istanbul Protocol in a virtual versus face-to-face environment, through which they assess the advantages and disadvantages of online methodologies for forensic assessments.

İlker Özyıldırım and colleagues, contribute with a study that assesses the effectiveness of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in patients with PTSD as a results of torture and severe human rights violations.

Following these studies, this issue compiles three contributions that conform a special section on forensic documentation of psychological torture.

Given the difficulty to legally substantiate and establish harms produces by threatening acts, as well as to clearly identify the harms that go beyond the fear and stress inherent (hence, unlawful) in law enforcement practices, Pau Pérez-Sales et al. present a Protocol on medico-legal documentation of threats to enhance documentation and assessment of harms so that stronger legal claims can be submitted to local and international complaint mechanisms.

Jane Kilpatrick et al., review the definition and the spectrum of deprivation of sunlight as a method of torture, drawing on the harms caused by this practice that may amount to torture.

Marie Brasholt and colleagues close the special section with the presentation of a Protocol on medico-legal documentation of solitary confinement which seeks to improve doc­umentation of solitary confinement and, hence, to clarify the facts of the case so that stronger legal claims can subsequently be sub­mitted to local and international complaints mechanisms.

In our continuous education section, Olivia Febles Simeon and C. Nicholas Cuneo present the case of MA, a case of a survivor of labour trafficking, kidnapping, and sexual violence in her home country; to demonstrate the value of remote evaluations conducted by health professionals for the purpose of applying for humanitarian parole and prioritizing the most vulnerable cases.

This issue also contains a thematic briefing summarising the key findings and recommendations to the United Nations Working Group following the official presentation of the monographic issue on Enforced Disappearances as Torture in Geneva, together with OMCT, on the 22nd of September.

Moreover, we celebrate the new appointment of our fellow board member, Dr. Alice Edwards, as the new Special Rapporteur against Torture. In this issue, in addition to welcoming her appointment, we include an article written by herself discussing her priorities during her tenure and the role of the Torture Journal.

Finally, this issue also includes the forthcoming call for papers for three special sections on Survivor Engagement, Livelihoods and Prisons, in which we encourage you all to submit papers, in case you have relevant research and/or experiences to share in these areas.

You, the readers and authors, are responsible for the increasing growth of Torture Journal: a home for all.

We would like to especially thank the authors for their excellent work and contribution to the Torture Journal, and OSSTT and STARTTS for their valuable continued support.

Published: 2023-03-17

Full Issue

Research and Scientific articles

Special section: forensic documentation of psychological torture

In Memoriam

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.