Center for Victims of Torture (CVT)

International Services CVT's international projects utilize group counseling/therapy, social services, and physical therapy as well as non-intensive resilience-focused interventions. In Ethiopia, CVT works in refugee camps and communities of displacement in the country's north, and in Gambella in the west. In Jordan, CVT cares for urban refugees in Amman. CVT maintains small operations in two locations in Kenya, including Nairobi and Kalobeyei. In Uganda, CVT has a longstanding center in Gulu where survivors of the Lord's Resistance Army atrocities receive care. CVT also is a sub-grantee to another international organization in a refugee settlement in the country's southwest. In Iraq, CVT builds the capacity of local service providers to treat Iraqi survivors of torture, war trauma, and sexual and gender-based violence. In its international direct service programs this past year, CVT provided trauma rehabilitation services to over 2,220 survivors of war violence and human rights violations, including about 965 survivors of torture; these services are also estimated to have benefited about 10,975 household members of clients.

U.S. Clinical ProgramsResponding to the lasting physical and psychological damage done by torture, CVT's Clinical Programs annually touches the lives of nearly 1,000 torture survivors and family members. The program offers services in Minnesota in St. Paul and St. Cloud, as well as in the greater Atlanta area, Georgia. While each service program is adapted to meet the needs of the particular community and setting, the core intervention at all domestic sites is psychotherapy and case management to connect survivors with resources available in the community. In Arizona, through a project entitled Proyecto Mariposa, CVT provides destination case management to asylum-seeking families with complex physical and psychological health needs.

Capacity DevelopmentCVT's Capacity Development department supports external organizations and individuals to strengthen their capacity to do healing, advocacy, research, and prevention work.The National Capacity Building (NCB) project organizes technical assistance for the US-based network of 43 torture survivor centers and programs in 25 states, and other refugee and immigrant service organizations to strengthen the delivery of integrated, sustainable care for survivors across the United States. The Helping Survivors Heal (HSH) project works with 11 torture rehabilitation organizations outside the US with a goal to expand access to appropriate evidence based mental health and psychosocial services to survivors of torture. The New Tactics in Human Rights program promotes enhanced strategic and tactical planning and action among the human rights community around the world and online with thousands of training participants from 89 countries. The IDREAM Project supports human rights defenders (HRDs) around the world who have been forced into exile due to their human rights advocacy work by providing capacity development services in these three areas: mental health resilience; effective advocacy; and integrated security; other projects provide similar support to HRDs in their home countries.

ResearchMonitoring, evaluation, and research are focus areas for CVT. In direct services programs (both within the United States and internationally), CVT measures change in clients' mental health symptoms and adaptive social functioning, that is the trajectory of recovery after extreme psychological and physical traumas to independent functioning in the world. Evaluation and research staff serve as subject matter experts on evaluation and provide internal evaluation through CVTs capacity development projects which build the strength of individuals, organizations, and networks that provide services to torture survivors and are engaged in defending human rights and ending torture around the world.Public Policy/EducationPolicy advocacy centers around three primary areas: maintaining and where feasible increasing both U.S. and other governments' funding for torture survivor rehabilitation programs in the U.S. and abroad; preserving access to asylum and refugee resettlement for survivors of torture seeking protection in the United States; and ensuring humane detention, interrogation, and prisoner treatment policies in U.S. counterterrorism operations.CVT's work on U.S. appropriations to torture survivor rehabilitation work results in funding of $40 million annually: $19 million for domestic torture survivor programs through the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement; $12 million to programs worldwide through the Victims of Torture Fund at U.S. Agency for International Development; and $9 million in funds for torture survivor programs worldwide through a State Department contribution to the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture.