United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

As Prepared 

Thank you for the opportunity to be with you this evening. I too would like to offer my congratulations to Dr. Salzberg on his achievements and his retirement. As it happens, I will be leaving my post at the State Department at the end of next week. I’m approaching this transition with great anticipation, but it will be hard to leave behind the humanitarian work that I have focused on for the past three and a half years. No one is irreplaceable, however. I think John and I can both be reassured that so many people here today share our basic values and goals, and will continue to hold the torch high after we go on to other things. I also don’t intend to leave the field entirely, nor, I suspect, does John.

The International Day in Support of the Victims of Torture falls in the same week as World Refugee Day. Secretary of State Rice, speaking at a World Refugee Day observance in Washington, described the struggle, resilience, strength, and humanity, of refugees. Those same words can equally be applied to the victims of torture. I would like to give you some examples of how we in the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, include victims of torture in our daily mission of protecting refugees.

Since 1999, the Center for the Victims of Torture has been the Bureau’s partner in programs that serve victims of torture in West Africa. Our collaboration began in Guinea with refugees from Sierra Leone. As you may know, terrible atrocities were committed during the civil war in Sierra Leone. The 1999 State Department Human Rights Report for Sierra Leone refers to "brutal killings, abductions, deliberate mutilations, and rape" by rebel forces, as well as extra judicial killings by the government and allied forces, beatings, and arbitrary detentions. As a result of the conflict, some 500,000 Sierra Leoneans fled into neighboring Guinea and Liberia. At our Bureau’s request, the Center for the Victims of Torture investigated whether it could establish a program to provide treatment to torture victims among the refugees in Guinea. It did; and more than 1700 refugees received assistance. The Center also recruited nearly 100 refugees to work as psychosocial agents. These refugees -- many of whom had some degree of health education or experience already -- received training in counseling skills, community organization and general mental health issues. This allowed them to provide individual and group counseling to victims, and helped them spread awareness of mental health issues within the refugee population.

We continued our support of this program for approximately two years, until the end of the civil war and the restoration of peace made it possible for most of the Sierra Leonean refugees to return to their homeland.

Unfortunately, the end of the conflict in Sierra Leone did not mean that CVT’s services were no longer needed in West Africa. While the conflict in Sierra Leone was winding down, Liberian refugees were fleeing into Guinea and Sierra Leone because of Liberia’s civil war. The Liberian refugees had experienced widespread human rights abuses and violence, including arbitrary killings and detention, mutilations, rape and sexual violence against women and children, forced recruitment and use of child soldiers, and systematic destruction of homes and entire villages leading to forced displacements.

Initially, we asked the Center to provide the same care for these refugees as they had for the Sierra Leoneans. CVT established seven community health centers in the refugee camps in Guinea and Sierra Leone, with facilities built primarily by volunteers from the camps. It was gratifying for us to observe that other non-governmental organizations working with the refugees quickly recognized the value that the centers provide and began referring traumatized individuals for treatment. This project also included recruiting and training of psychosocial agents from within the refugee population.

We’ve now asked the Center for the Victims of Torture to take this program into Liberia. The refugees are beginning to return home from Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Sierra Leone. We believe that the counseling and assistance already provided to the refugees will help them in the process of reintegration, but we want to continue to support this very needy population as much as we can. According to the Liberian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, there is only one psychiatrist in all of Liberia, and only a few nurses with psychiatric training. The CVT-training psychosocial staff will form the core of a new group of service providers in Liberia, and we’re asking CVT to train more.

We also want to apply in Liberia a lesson we learned from our humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan. Called "twinning," it simply means pairing up a government ministry or organization with an international or non-governmental organization working in the same field. In Afghanistan, for example, UNICEF is twinned with the Ministry of Education. In Liberia, CVT will twin with the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. The Center will help the Ministry develop its own capacity to provide or manage mental health care services. The Center will also help the educational system create appropriate training programs so that Liberian institutions will be developing skilled Liberian counselors to work with Liberians who have been victimized.

Employment is also a vital follow-on to psychosocial counseling. Afghanistan also offers a model here, in the Afghan Conservation Corps. We took a page from Franklin Roosevelt’s book and created a program to employ Afghan returnees in rebuilding the ecosystem of their country through the planting of trees. More than 750,000 seedlings have been planted in the hills around Kabul. 600,000 labor days have been spent on the project, and a large part of the labor force is returned refugees and displaced persons. We have also worked hard to ensure that women have the opportunity to participate in this program. This kind of employment is beneficial for the country and for the individuals and families who need income. It also helps refugees and the internally displaced recover their sense of self-worth by giving them gainful, useful employment.

All of these activities are part of my Bureau’s mandate to find sustainable solutions for refugees. Sometimes, the best solution for refugees is resettlement in a third country. The United States leads the world in this effort, too. Last year more than 53,000 refugees came to the U.S. to begin new lives. All refugees are survivors, all have experienced persecution, but among those 53,000 were a group of about 450 people with particularly terrible stories to tell. They were among the Sierra Leonean refugee population in Ghana. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees referred them to our refugee resettlement program because their suffering made it unlikely that they could ever successfully return to Sierra Leone. Their experiences will sound familiar to those of you who work in this field.

• One woman was a youth leader in her village. She led peaceful demonstrations against the local government. She was captured, stabbed, and raped, by rebel soldiers, and her children were burned with cigarettes.
 • A man who supported an opposition political party was attacked. His son and mother-in-law were murdered, his wife and daughter raped.
 • And there are many, many more.

Officers from the Department of Homeland Security interview all individuals who are considered for resettlement in the U.S. as refugees and make the final decision on whom to admit. While almost all are approved, in any group there are likely to be a few who are rejected. For this group of Sierra Leoneans, the approval rate was 100%. All of them have now left the camps in Ghana and arrived in the United States. The woman and her family live in St. Louis, the man who lost his son and mother-in-law is in Utah.

One of these stories has a name to it. Mohammed Bangura agreed to be included in an October 2004 "Life" Magazine article called "Packing for America". Mohammed and his family were tortured for their political views. Among the items they brought with them to the U.S. was a letter from the School for the Deaf in Sekondi, Ghana, attesting to the near-total hearing loss of Mohammed’s son, who was beaten in a rebel attack on their village. I can report that the family is doing well in Gretna, Louisiana. Mohammed’s wife Kadiatu recently gave birth to a boy named Lamin. She hopes he will be a doctor. Mohammed has found a job, and while the family sometimes struggles to make ends meet, they are supported by the community and have not had to receive public assistance. The children are in school, and the whole family is making friends with other refugees from Africa who live in the area.

As we observe the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, we think of people like Mohammed. For him, relief and hope are here in America. For many others, the Center’s work in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and now Liberia, provides healing and the possibility to start again. I’m proud to associate the Department of State and myself with these victims and to be a partner with the Center in bringing assistance and hope for a better future than they would otherwise have known. Thank you.