U.N. Expert Proposes Anti-Torture Plan

Bradley S. Klapper
March 27, 2007
Washington Post
Original Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/27/AR2007032701928.html
The United Nations' top anti-torture investigator is proposing a new strategy to stop countries from abusing prisoners: bill them.
Manfred Nowak said Tuesday it was unfair that rich countries in Europe and North America were footing the medical, psychological and legal costs for people who have been tortured around the world.
Countries where torture is widespread or even systematic should be held accountable to pay, Nowak told reporters in Geneva, where he addressed the U.N. Human Rights Council. If individual torturers would have to pay all the long-term rehabilitation costs, this would have a much stronger deterrent effect on torture than some kind of disciplinary or lenient criminal punishment.
Nowak said the European Union is the single biggest financier of torture rehabilitation, providing $29 million in funds to centers in the 27-nation bloc. The second-largest donor is a U.N. fund for torture victims whose $17 million budget is funded heavily by the United States, Denmark and the Netherlands.
While he congratulated those governments for their contributions, the Austrian law professor said it is ultimately the countries committing the abuse that are obliged to pay for long-term medical and other costs. He said they should have to pay into the U.N. fund.
Ideally those states should then actually get the money back from the individual perpetrators, the Austrian law professor said. He declined to say which countries were the worst offenders.
A global average of the cost of treating a single torture victim was unavailable, but the London-based Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture said it spends about $2,750 annually per person for medical, therapeutic and case work costs.
Sune Segal, spokesman for the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, a Copenhagen-based umbrella group for 200 rehabilitation centers and programs worldwide, said Iraqis comprise perhaps the largest group of torture victims seeking assistance.
The rehabilitation council's member centers treat about 100,000 torture victims and their relatives each year, he said. Large numbers of people from Russia's war-shattered Chechnya province and the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan also have flooded into European centers for torture rehabilitation, he said.