Name: The World Organisation Against Torture
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It is less known that torture is often closely related to migration, whether as an underlying root cause or as one of the worst crimes migrants have to endure on their journey. Moreover, once they reach safety, migrants who are torture survivors need support and treatment. Both are key to inclusion and rights-based policies.

States have been largely unwilling or unable to put in place minimum levels of protection for people on the move. In Africa - as elsewhere - existing migration laws and policies to protect migrants against torture have proven largely ineffective. Transit countries in the Maghreb and destination countries in Europe have implemented pullback and pushback policies that have recently increased the vulnerability of migrants to criminal groups and traffickers.

Additionally, many essential aspects of the torture and ill-treatment experienced by people on the move in, across, and at the gates of Africa, Latin America, and Asia remain particularly under-researched and undocumented. Torture, especially on the so-called new migration routes, is pervasive, but its human cost is never fully understood or is reduced to a few statistics, sporadic viral images on social media, or occasional coverage by the mainstream media. Moreover, once they reach “safe countries,” these men, women, and children don’t receive support and access to treatment and increasingly face detention or even the risk of being sent back to torture.

One in 30 people in the world is a migrant

This is why the OMCT and its global SOS-Torture Network work together to protect migrants from torture. They conduct detailed research and make recommendations that go beyond the humanitarian consequences of forced displacement, to improve the protection of migrants against torture and ill-treatment. Otherwise, these people will never be safe – whether at home, in transit, or at their destination.

The Cycle of Abuse against People on the Move in Africa

the OMCT brought together 12 experts from various members and partners of the SOS-Torture Network in Africa and Southern Europe, all of whom work with migrants who have been subjected to torture. This Migration and Torture Working Group carried out ambitious collective research to document torture along Africa’s migration routes, give a voice to its victims, and design protection strategies that could inform State policies and reinforce the protective role of international human rights bodies.

Tunisia

Tunisia continues to be a transit country for people on the move from sub-Saharan Africa: thousands of men, women and children leave their countries of origin in the Sahel region - increasingly characterised by persistent poverty and insecurity, conflict-induced displacement and climate change - and embark on a perilous journey of violence and death with the sole aim of reaching Europe.

Since October 2022, Tunisia has seen a progressive intensification of violations against migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, against a backdrop of racial discrimination. The OMCT started documenting violations suffered by this group in February 2023 to highlight the plight of people on the move in Tunisia.

In December 2023, the OMCT published the report Torture roads vol n°1 covering the period July to October 2023.
In September 2024, the OMCT published the report Torture roads vol n°2 covering the period November 2023 to April 2024.

The OMCT believes that an analysis of the human rights situation of people on the move residing in Tunisia is essential, among other things, to support the efforts of Tunisian authorities to comply with their obligations under international human rights law, and to promote the adoption and implementation of policies based on equity, justice and human rights for all.