Best practices in survivor engagement in IRCT member centres

While the literature encourages engaging torture survivors in the direction and provision of services, little is known about how best to do this.

We surveyed 82 member centres of the International Rehabilitation Council for TortureVictims (IRCT), a worldwide network of anti-torture organisations, and interviewed fourteen staff members and executive directors about current practices, best practices, and the advantages and disadvantages of engaging survivors.

While few agencies involve survivors extensively, those that did found survivor engagement helped agencies engage in better planning, service provision, and advocacy, while at the same time being healing and empowering for survivors. Agency staff described strategies to minimize retraumatization, particularly in not encouraging survivors to share the story of their trauma, but to engage in other ways. Agency staff suggested a number of ways to engage survivors in program direction, service provision, and advocacy, which included having survivors serve on the board of directors, hiring survivors as staff, involving survivors in advocacy, advising staff and volunteers on how better to provide services, and working as community outreach workers and mediators.

IRCT member centres can engage survivors in programming without retraumatizing them, and there are many advantages to doing so.