Since 1981, the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture has helped an average of 50,000 victims of torture every year in countries in every region of the world. A special webinar was organized to mark the 40th anniversary of the Fund and the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, by the four UN mandates working against torture, in partnership with UN Human Rights and the American University, Washington College of Law, Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law.

In Nigeria, Avocats sans Frontières France, an organization supported by the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture, achieves redress for three victims of torture and arbitrary detention in seminal court cases.

The UN Anti-Torture mechanisms unanimously warned that the COVID-19 pandemic is leading to an escalation of torture and ill-treatment worldwide, and torture survivors are especially in danger of getting infected by the lethal virus.

In the late 1990s, some 300,000 Peruvian women were subjected to a programme of sterilisation, ordered by the government’s National Reproductive Health and Family Planning Programme. Maria Elena Carbajal Cepeda was one of these women. She now heads an organisation which is defending the rights of survivors.