Donor Organisation:
United Nation Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

Title of the project:
Psycho-social Rehabilitation of Torture Victims in Hungary

Project period: January 2008 - December 2008

Amount of support: 55 000 USD

The main objective of the rehabilitation activities of the Foundation remains psychological and psychiatric care offered to torture survivors through a combination of therapeutic methods, such as verbal, non-verbal, individual and group therapies. During the 12 months of the project we foresee to provide psychiatric/psychological care to approximately 150 victimized refugees at the reception centres at Békéscsaba, Bicske and Debrecen, in the Red Cross House of Unaccompanied Minors at Nagykanizsa and in the Budapest centre of the Cordelia Foundation.

Psychological and psychiatric treatments are aimed at:

• Facilitating the development, strengthening of coping mechanisms, facilitating adaptation and social integration;
• Prevention of long-lasting effects of torture;
• Decrease the risk of secondary traumatization;
• Treatment of somatic disorders, injuries and other physical effects of torture

1) Providing special care to high risk groups: children, unaccompanied minors and women
While being refugee challenges everyone regardless of gender, women’s experiences do have unique traits. This originates from the distortion of traditional gender roles during the course of fleeing their home country. In fact, most refugee women come from societies which assign specific roles to women and men which roles might be in conflict with the culture and norms of their new host societies.
It is a characteristic of current refugee flows, that they’re comprised of many unaccompanied minors, mostly arriving from India, Bangladesh, Iran, Chechnya, Georgia, Nigeria, and other countries where war or oppressing regimes had ruined their individual and family life. Being alone they get into a very serious regressive state, uprooted, unable to navigate among the new circumstances. Some of them are deeply depressed while others behave like psychotics. They are in a severe need for psychological, psychiatric, social, and legal support. Minors arriving with their families also deserve special attention, primarily because of the important role they play in the integration of the whole family into the host society.

2) Fostering social integration into the host society
The assistance provided by the social worker intends to facilitate integration and adaptation into the new environment through providing social orientation. This orientation includes facilitating access to aid programmes and the relevant NGOs, as well as organizing access to education programmes: Hungarian language courses for adults and schooling for children and minors. In addition, the social worker provides continuous assistance in everyday problems such as administrative procedures or finding general medical services. Cordelia's Hungarian language teacher offers language courses developed specifically for torture victims in the reception centres on a regular basis.

3) Improve the chances of favourable evaluation of the asylum application of torture survivor
The medico-legal reports are based on the guidelines of the Istanbul Protocol and issued to asylum seekers who have been subjected to torture in their home countries. The reports state psychological/somatic evidence of torture, thus support the clients’ claim for asylum. The report is all the more relevant in the evaluation procedure, since most torture survivors find it shameful to recall the experience of torture and may not mention it in the official procedure.

4) Research and publication
The project also involves the publication of a guide book and training manual aimed at the secondary target group, professionals and staff involved in the refugee process. To date there is no collection of primary sources, methodological guidelines and accounts of work experiences (case studies) on this very specific clientele.