Torture victims often need long and costly treatment, and usually rich nations foot the bill rather than the offending states.
Victims of torture
Victims of torture
Victims of torture
Victims often need care and treatment ©Torture victims often need long and costly treatment, and usually rich nations foot the bill rather than the offending states, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak.
Currently (2007) the EU is the biggest donor to torture rehabilitation centres, providing $29m (22m euros). The UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture is the second biggest financier of torture rehabilitation, providing $17m (13m euros).
In his annual report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in 2007, Nowak said that states that commit acts of torture should be forced to pay for victims' rehabilitation.
Mr Nowak suggested that such states could then even pass the bill on to the individual torturers.
If individual torturers would have to pay all the long-term costs, this would have a much stronger deterrent effect on torture than some kind of disciplinary or lenient criminal punishment.
In reality, it's almost never the state that tortures, but other states who provide asylum, who take victims of torture and who are then providing in state institutions rehabilitation.
Torturers 'must pay victims' - UN, BBC News, 27 March 2007
Around the BBC
Elsewhere on the web
BBC iD
BBC iDBBC navigation
BBC links
BBC © 2014The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.
