We want to see the UN challenging countries

Today marks the first anniversary of the UN General Assembly adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of seventeen ambitious global goals designed to end extreme poverty and global inequality by 2030.

Goal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels is of particular interest to Freedom from Torture. This Global Goal highlights the need for countries to commit to significantly reducing all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere; ending abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children; and promoting the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all.

Freedom from Torture continues to present our evidence of torture to the UN so that countries can be held to account for these abuses, yet in this last year, since the Global SDGs were adopted, we have received referrals from 78 countries of origin – this demonstrates just how much more work needs to be done.

We want to see the UN challenging countries, in particular the top ten countries with the highest number of referrals to Freedom from Torture for psychological therapies or forensic documentation of torture: Sri Lanka, Iran, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Turkey, Afghanistan, India, Eritrea, Nigeria and Iraq to do more.

The Sustainable Development Goals remind us all of the need to address the root causes of torture and other human rights abuses but long-term work to address these issues should not mean that we ignore the desperate plight of torture survivors, many of which are caught up in the refugee crisis today.