Our Mission is to provide holistic health care coordinated with social services and legal aid for asylum seekers, refugees, survivors of torture, and their families. We also train professionals to serve this population, conduct research to understand and implement best-practices, and promote health and human rights, locally and globally, to improve the quality of life for survivors of torture and their communities.

The Center for Victims of Torture works toward a future in which torture ceases to exist and its victims have hope for a new life. We are an international nonprofit dedicated to healing survivors of torture. We provide care to survivors, train partners around the world who can prevent torture and treat its victims, conduct research to understand how best to heal survivors, and advocate for an end to torture.

Healing Care for Torture Survivors

We rebuild lives by extending care to torture survivors around the world. In Minnesota, torture survivors receive out-patient care at our Healing Center in St. Paul. A team of healers provides medical and nursing care, psychotherapy, social services and massage and physical therapy. Our international healing initiatives are in refugee camps and post-conflict areas where few mental health resources are available. We train local community members and refugees to meet the mental health needs of their compatriots for the long term.

Training for those working with Torture Survivors

We offer training projects around the world so that individuals and organizations can learn new and improved ways to provide healing services to torture survivors. Our training projects build networks of torture survivor rehabilitation centers and service providers; share knowledge through publications; connect peers in online communities; support organizational development; and mentor and coach individual mental health counselors.

Research on the effects of torture

CVT conducts rigorous evaluation and monitoring to ensure the work we do is effective. Measuring the progress of survivors is embedded into the therapeutic process of every CVT healing initiative. We also work with other torture survivor rehabilitation centers to help them develop their own tools for measuring the impact of rehabilitation services on the well-being of torture survivors.

Our healing services in Minnesota and at our international projects consistently document significant decreases in mental health symptoms such as anxiety and depression, decreases in somatic (physical) symptoms, along with remarkable increases in measure of functionality and social connections.

Advocacy for torture rehabilitation

Our Washington office works with members of Congress to support funds for healing services to survivors in the United States and abroad. Since 2000, CVT has secured annual appropriations to the point where the United States is now the world’s largest donor to torture survivor rehabilitation programs.

Visit CVT’s Web site for more information at: www.cvt.org/.

Clinical evaluations and expert evidence in asylum proceedings

Founded in 1994, HealthRight International’s Human Rights Clinic mobilizes the health sector to assist survivors of torture and abuse seeking asylum and other forms of immigration relief in the U.S. HRC trains and deploys volunteer physicians and mental health professionals to provide clinical examinations for survivors, document the scars and signs of abuse, and prepare affidavits for use as expert evidence in immigration proceedings. The rate of grant of asylum for clients who obtained expert affidavits from the Human rights Clinic has been about 85 to 90 percent as opposed to the national average of about 25 percent. Learn more.

Training and support for clinical volunteers

HRC provides physicians and mental health professionals with intensive training that prepares them to recognize and document the medical and psychological effects of torture and to write effective clinical affidavits. HRC volunteers form a network of hundreds of professionals across more than a dozen states who evaluate survivors of torture and other human rights abuses seeking asylum and other forms of immigration relief. Learn more.

Access to Support and Services for Survivors of Torture (ASSIST)

Many survivors come to the U.S. with little more than the contents of a backpack. Apart from the painful physical and psychological consequences of their abuse, they face the financial, medical, social, and logistical challenges of settling in a new country. Through the ASSIST program, HRC connects clients to community resources that facilitate resettlement, such as treatment centers, medical care, employment, food, housing, and ESL opportunities. Learn more.