"This is a day on which we pay our respects to those who have endured the unimaginable. This is an occasion for the world to speak up against the unspeakable.”
With these words 14 years ago today, Former United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, marked the first-ever International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. This annual event is dedicated to remembering victims, supporting survivors, and honoring those who have dedicated their lives to fighting torture around the world. June 26 carries great meaning as both the day the United Nations Charter was signed in 1945 and the day in 1987 when the United Nations Convention Against Torture came into effect.
Today, as we reflect on the impact that torture has had on so many people and appreciate those who continue to fight against it, let us not forget the often overlooked victims and survivors who have been tortured under the guise of health care.
Health settings should be places where human rights are realized. It is, after all, hospitals and clinics where people come—often with their defenses down and at their time of greatest need—seeking care, trusting the judgment and expertise of doctors and nurses, and never suspecting that they may need to steel themselves against abuse. Yet, across the world, health facilities often serve as venues of punishment, coercion, and violations of basic human rights, sometimes amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Torture in health care disproportionately affects people from stigmatized and socially marginalized groups—people living with HIV, people with life-limiting illnesses, ethnic and racial minorities, sexual and gender minorities, people who use drugs, and people with intellectual disabilities or mental health problems.
Late last year, the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights (Interights) published a dedicated issue of its respected Bulletin on torture and ill treatment in health care. Contributors highlighted some of the most egregious abuses, including forced and coerced sterilization, detention and physical abuse in the name of drug treatment, and denial of cheap and effective painrelief medications for patients with life-limiting illnesses. In 2009, Human Rights Watch released a report, Please Do Not Make Us Suffer Anymore, in which patients in India who suffered from severe and untreated pain “expressed the exact same sentiment as torture survivors: all they wanted was for the pain to stop.” Patients who are denied access to adequate pain treatment have often told doctors that they would prefer death over the unbearable pain they are forced to endure.
International law explicitly protects patients in health settings against torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, and there are many national, regional, and international mechanisms designed to promote accountability for such abuse.Yet, these mechanisms are rarely applied to health facilities.
To help address this gap, and on the occasion of this year’s International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the Open Society Foundations and other partners in the Campaign to Stop Torture in Health Care are pleased to announce the publication of the manual Twenty Mechanisms for Addressing Torture in Health Care. The Open Society Foundations has also launched a new grants competition to support advocates to use the manual in fighting instances of torture in health care in their communities or the communities of those with whom they work. The manual describes 20 anti-torture mechanisms from the United Nations and from African, European, and Inter-American human rights systems and provides illustrative examples on how to use these mechanisms to fight torture in health care. For each mechanism, the manual explores mandate, procedure, possibilities for engagement, and prior work on torture in health care.
We hope the manual and the associated grants will serve as a resource for organizations that advocate against abuse in health care or those that would like to start. These could include international, regional, and national human rights organizations; groups focused on particular health care abuses; anti-torture groups; or UN treaty bodies themselves. We hope that these tools help those fighting torture in health care to “speak up against the unspeakable.”
6 Comments
Health care is not only a matter of quality care in healht care facilities. Public health is concernced with social structures that impact health of people. Attempted suicide in many countries is a criminal offence punishable by fine and imprisonment. Public health approach to suicide would draw attention to the 'torturous' conditions that push a person to attempt sucide. Social conditions constituting 'torture' should also be included in the work on freedom from torture.
Torture contradicts human nature itself and is one of the most shameful phenomena in society, moreover one regarding ill people suffered from pain is the worst among them and demands adequate measures and concentration of energies on the part of humanity
After reading the comemoration of world anti torture day I have learnt that there are lot of tortures going on in our health centre in Zambia.For delayed sputum results for TB is an exmple of torture to patient,the delaying to put an HIV positive person on ARVs due to late releasing of CD4 results is another torture too.Thank you for opening my eyes
In most parts of the world we have been suffering and continues suffering in silence because we are voiceless and powerless!
In 2004 I was made to watch my ailing wife die slowly admist my pleas that she be tested for HIV. My reason for that was the realization that she had been on TB treatment twice without getting better and was slowly wasting away before my very eyes while I hopelessly watched her! The trauma of this on myself will take a life time to get erased, let alone the trauma that shall live with my Children for their entire lifetime!
Following her death, I was made to wait for a long period of time after my HIV diagnosis for my CD4 count test results. I was gradually wasting away but was saved by one bold medical doctor who took the chance and introduced me to ART. Besides having suffered this toture myself, my young daughter shall never forget the trauma of seeing her father wasting away like her mother before while she helplessly waited for the eventual! This has lived with my daughter to the present day, such that if I happen to delay getting back from work due to work exigiences by an hour I find her trembling with fear that might have fallen ill and is not going to get back home-like her mother before who never came back from hospital.
In my country, I daily get saddened by seeing HIV care patients in open waiting rooms in tempratures below zero while waiting to be attended to! What makes it worse is that you will find that other patients suffering from other ailments would be in heated waiting rooms comfortably waiting for service!
There are numerous incidents of this toture that may not fill this space of toture in health care facilities for HIV care patients in my country-but th People are silent bearers of this pain for not knowing what to say, to whom and where!
Thank you for sharing these powerful stories. We must work together to ensure accountability for torture and abuse in health care.
Next week is the International AIDS Conference in Washington, DC. The Women's Networking Zone will be hosting a series of sessions on forced sterilization of women living with HIV in the Global Village (accessible to the community and not just to conference participants). For additional information, please see http://www.athenanetwork.org/.
Torture has more impact on the mental aspect of a person more than its physical. Giving aid to torture sufferers should focus on the whole aspect. Health care in this sense must not only be looking to take care of physical health.
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