The article addresses the issue of prison overcrowding and how it can be tantamount to ill-treatment or torture under international law. Faced with such a broad phenomenon, the piece focuses on two elements that may help to assess this circumstance: the existence of a minimum standard with respect to living space, and the use of tools to establish the existence of harm caused by inhuman conditions of incarceration. The article will show novel jurisprudence of some Courts to secure reparation for victims (early release and reduction of sentence time as offsetting) and will address discussion on the scope and limitations of these decisions with the aim of proposing even more courageous measures to ensure group and generalised reparation measures to reduce the rates of structural institutional violence in prisons.

Based on the reflections of a multidisciplinary group of experts, Physicians for Human Rights Israel and Antigone worked on the International Guiding Statement on Alternatives to Solitary Confinement, proposing global guidelines for reducing and finally overcoming the use of solitary confinement in prisons.

As an IRCT member organization supporting survivors of torture, the Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition (TASSC) International places survivor engagement at the core of their work, aiming to provide safe and inclusive spaces for survivors to speak out and take meaningful action to prevent torture. This article describes TASSC's model for engaging survivors in advocacy and presents evidence on the personal impacts such engagement can have. Each year from 2016-2019, TASSC administered a simple survey with questions for survivors to complete after their annual "Advocacy Day" in Washington D.C. Quantitative and qualitative data was collected to inform internal service provision and the design of future events. Across the four years a total of 140 survivors and compatriot human rights advocates participated in the annual Advocacy Day, and a majority completed the surveys. In their survey responses, survivors agreed they had many positive thoughts and feelings after advocacy. Their reported positive experiences included a sense of being listened to and heard by an understanding and responsive audience, the power of feeling part of a group that was speaking out on behalf of themselves and others, and a sense of motivation and hopefulness for the future. Although undertaken primarily to inform internal processes, TASSC's surveys with survivors who engaged in advocacy shed light on the potential value of well-designed advocacy experiences. Consistent with past research, survivors reported strong motivations around and compelling benefits from participating, despite the challenges that the deeply personal nature of their engagement could present. This feedback suggests TASSC has a strong model that could be replicated elsewhere, but it would be beneficial to further investigate the experiences of survivors engaging in advocacy in other country settings.

In this paper, the author advocates for a psychosocial and community perspective in the work with child soldiers, as torture survivors. Healing is a priority for former child soldiers, many of whom have survived mass exposures to violence, perpetrated violence, or both. Reintegration programming is often limited by individualized treatment and deficits focused approaches that do not address powerful social barriers to reintegration such as stigma and not having a positive social role. This paper outlines a more holistic, relational approach to reintegration that addresses clinical maladies but also addresses the need for positive social relationships that support young people's resilience and well-being. Underscoring the importance of a multi-disciplinary approach, it calls for the integration of livelihoods supports with mental health and psychosocial supports.

Whilst it is established that torture survivors suffer from complex, multiple and often severe and enduring physical, psychological, social, welfare and many other difficulties; and that rehabilitation as reparation should be holistic, interdisciplinary and specialist, majority of the research on rehabilitation focuses increasingly and almost exclusively on psychological interventions. Further, as-sumptions that this research provides evi-dence of which are effective psychological interventions may underpin and skew ser-vices funded and provided to torture sur-vivors. In this paper we challenge some of those assumptions, and discuss the concep-tual, theoretical, epistemological and meth-odological limitations of this research and implications for future research.

The author brings an account of his life trajec-tory as a psychiatrist born and working in Pal-estine. The author dives in his early memories, including those of his brother's death, that shaped his character and the way he lives his rejection of occupation and violence. Besides the early institutional beginnings of the TRC Center in West Bank, the author describes the subtle forms of the daily abuse that a doctor working in Palestine must endure.

Background: The decade long civil war that struck Algeria in the 90s still has strong impacts on the Algerian society today. This article aims at describing how mass human rights violations committed by state actors have repercussions on far more than just the direct victims, which complicates post-war recovery and should be considered during the elaboration of any transitional justice process. Method: Interviews conducted among mothers, brothers and wives of individuals that were taken by state actors and have disappeared since then were analyzed to understand the impact enforced disappearances can have on more than the direct victims. Results: The study of the Algerian experience with enforced disappearances shows that the victimizations that result from enforced disappearances are multi-level and long-term. Discussion: Any post-conflict rehabilitation process that comes after such mass inhuman treatments that aspires to be complete and truly contribute to social well-being needs to also take into consideration secondary level victims, which represent family members of the direct victims, as well as third level victims, which represent the societal and collective memory impacts that result from the use of human rights violation mechanisms by state actors.

Abstract: Enforced disappearance in Africa occurs on a daily basis and no one is immune from becoming a victim. The practice, which commenced during the colonial times, continues today. Governments routinely use enforced disappearance as a tool to oppress the opposition and instill fear among the population in order to retain power. It is also used in the context of migration, as well as in many other contexts and against a variety of victims. As enforced disappearance is a crime committed by State officials with an interest in concealing it, the statistics on its prevalence are limited and do not show the full extent of the crime in Africa. Further, the lack of political will to acknowledge the use of this practice means that many African States lack policies and laws to prevent, investigate and punish the perpetrators of enforced disappearance. In the last two years, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights adopted two resolutions raising awareness of the crime and paving the way for drafting and adopting specific guidelines to address this crime, which would be a first step in setting up a holistic framework to eradicate enforced disappearances on the continent.

Thank you for this opportunity to share perspectives from our work within the Physiotherapy and Refugees Education Project, PREP, an Erasmus+ funded project within the KA2 strategic partnership program. Researchers, educators, students, and clinicians within institutions of higher education, health services and humanitarian organisations, have worked together in this project to define competencies that physiotherapists need in working with refugees. Based on this, we have made a course openly available for physiotherapists worldwide. A central aim of the work in PREP has been the creation of a network in which educators, students and clinicians can meet, discuss, and learn from each other. We welcome everyone who shares our interest to join us in this network. In this perspective paper, we want to share our thoughts and opinions on how such a collaboration can be used for building competence. We will discuss topics that are central for physiotherapists working with victims of torture, and finally, we will discuss what we believe are the important next steps within physiotherapy to be able to support this group.

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