The volunteer-based association Doctors Against Torture offers assistance and healthcare to victims of torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment from any country in the world.
A group of doctors and paramedics begins working together in Rome, part of the Italian Section of Amnesty International. The issues they focus on include the relationship between medicine and human rights violations, i.e., the participation of doctors in torture and the death penalty.
This group becomes known as the Doctors Coordinating Committee of the Italian Section of Amnesty International.
Amnesty International’s Doctors Coordinating Committee hosts Survive and Testify, an international convention in Rome on the medical and psychological consequences of torture. In Italy it is the first time these issues are dealt with in medical circles. Taking their cue from this event, Amnesty International doctors and psychologists working in Rome found, as volunteers, a clinical organization whose activities are parallel to and in sync with activities promoted by Amnesty International. The association known as Doctors Against Torture is born.
Doctors Against Torture joins the Italian Council for Refugees – a humanitarian organization founded several years earlier thanks to a United Nations initiative in defense of the rights of refugees. DAT assists victims of torture in the care of ICR, as well as other refugees and asylum applicants. These persons comprise a new social category heretofore virtually unknown in Italy.
Doctors Against Torture and ICR coordinate efforts to receive and provide assistance and healthcare to victims of torture, with support from the European Union and the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture.
The association Doctors Against Torture is formally constituted, and is the first organization in Italy to provide assistance and healthcare to victims of torture. DAT begins collaborating with volunteer clinics sponsored by Centro Astalli, Caritas di Roma and Focus – Casa dei Diritti Sociali (CDS). The Rete Radiè Resch network begins providing ongoing funding for DAT.
For the first time, the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture provides support for a DAT project. Collaboration between the two organizations will continue in the years to come.
Doctors Against Torture is called to testify before the Italian Senate Commission for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights. DAT begins working with the Waldensian Evangelical Church, with support from the Italian tax bureau’s Fondo ottopermille.
Doctors Against Torture begins working with migrant communities from Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia inside occupied warehouses at Rome’s Tiburtina train station, through the School Group and the participation of members of the Tiburtina Collective and a panel launched by the City of Rome’s Council for Social Services.
Doctors Against Torture expands its focus to include assistance for psychological trauma experienced by victims of torture, within a context of group work and cultural exchanges. The Doctors Against Torture Language and Storytelling Workshop is founded, which in 2008 gives rise to the association Laboratorio 53.
Doctors Against Torture contributes to the birth the public healthcare structure SaMiFo – Salute Migranti Forzati in Rome, created to provide asylum applicants and refugees with psychological, social and healthcare services.
Doctors Against Torture joins GRIS Lazio – Regional Immigration and Healthcare Group, founded in 1995 to defend migrants’ right to healthcare services.
Doctors Against Torture hosts the convention Tell of Torture in collaboration with the Department of Historical Linguistics and Anthropology at La Sapienza University of Rome. DAT also collaborates with Save The Children for age certification of unaccompanied foreign minors.
Doctors Against Torture officially adheres to the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT), an international network of associations that work for the prevention of torture and for the rehabilitation of victims, with over 140 independent member organizations in more than 70 countries.
Expanded staff allows for increased clinical intervention and the launching of new activities and experiences.
Doctors Against Torture begins collaboration with Doctors Without Borders through joint management of a rehabilitation center for survivors of torture and mistreatment. The experience makes use of DAT’s specific know-how and the association’s multidisciplinary approach.
The group dimension is reproposed, in which participants learn about Italian society and history through seminars and visits to key locations in Rome.
Physical therapy activities, already a part of DAT’s program, add to the group experience and prove highly useful in promoting socialization among participants.
Doctors Against Torture appoints a supervisor who provides support to staff regarding their daily contact with patients and the clinical management of the most complex and challenging cases.
The Charlemagne Foundation and the Haiku Foundation of Lugano provide support for new projects promoted by Doctors Against Torture.
Doctors Against Torture participates in workshops hosted by Doctors Without Borders in Athens and Rome.
March 22, 2017 The Italian Ministry of Health approves and publishes “guidelines for planning interventions of assistance and rehabilitation, as well as mental health treatment for persons with refugee status and subsidiary protection status who have been subject to torture, rape and other forms of psychological, physical and/or sexual violence”, written with the collaboration of Doctors Against Torture. The guidelines become the subject of a sprawling debate among the various organizations working in these areas, and on November 7, 2017 Doctors Without Borders and Doctors Against Torture host a workshop Rome on “The applicability and criticality of the Italian Ministry of Health’s guidelines for planning interventions of assistance and rehabilitation for survivors of torture and other forms of violence”.
Focus on the group dimension is consolidated, with in-house sessions and field trips aimed at reconnecting participants with their past/roots, while at the same time learning, within the group context, to deal with issues regarding culture shock and problems of assimilation.
Doctors Against Torture takes part in a wide range of meetings and workshops throughout Italy and internationally, including ACAT Europe and IRCT Belgrade.
Doctors Against Torture and 9 other associations join together to found TIS – Immigration and Health Panel, which includes permanent external components UNHCR, IOM and Italy’s Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS).
DAT representatives take part in a workshop, held in Vienna, on the rehabilitation of victims of torture, hosted by the Italian Delegation, which at the time headed OSCE/ODIHR.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Doctors Against Torture helps patients cope with various aspects of the emergency. DAT experiments with new forms of intervention, including remote and outdoor clinical treatment, social support and physical therapy sessions. Forms of direct assistance and collaboration with solidarity networks throughout Rome are expanded. Read this report by a DAT team.
Doctors Against Torture begins ongoing collaboration with Fondazione Migrantes.
At Doctors Against Torture’s operational location on Via Biancamano in Rome, the holistic methodological approach based on many years of experience is outlined and the organizational setup is finalized.
Issues involving patients’ response to Covid-19 vaccinations lead Doctors Against Torture to work outside normal operating scenarios, in order to provide information regarding the Covid-19 virus, vaccinations and general healthcare and access to services (read the report). Meetings aimed at providing knowledge of how Italy’s national healthcare system works are held at various locations and at Doctors Against Torture’s operational location on Via Biancamano. Instruction for digital literacy is also launched.
Doctors Against Torture expands legal aid interventions and communications with regard to DAT’s holistic approach.
Doctors Against Torture is today a volunteer organization accredited by Italy’s tertiary sector registry RUNTS whose fundraising efforts take into account donors’ ethical standards. DAT’s organizational format relies on research that focuses on generational turnover and changes in social and political contexts.
DAT’s consolidated clinical experience provides medical and mental health care, social assistance, physical therapy, language and cultural mediation, and offers patients opportunities for group support and socialization.
DAT continues its special longtime commitment to providing support for language and cultural mediators.
Since 1999 Doctors Against Torture has provided assistance to over 2,000 persons from five continents (Europe, Asia, the Americas, Africa).
