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VOT Country Programs: Tibet
Tibetan Torture Survivors Program
Implementing Partners: Tibetan Voluntary Health Association
Funding Period: October 2002 - September 2005
Amount: $185,000
Purpose: Provide comprehensive treatment services to torture survivors who
escape into India from Tibet.
Objectives:
- Rehabilitate torture victims through medical treatment and rehabilitation services aimed at helping
survivors adjust to their new circumstances. Treatment includes traditional and modern medicine,
psychotherapy, physiotherapy, and counseling.
- Track progress of survivors through the creation of a documentation unit.
- Research the help-seeking behavior of Tibetan torture victims and the effects of traditional
Tibetan medicine on psychosomatic disorders of survivors.
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After his departure from Tibet, the Dalai Lama set up the Central Tibetan Administration as a
government-in-exile in Dharamsala, a small hill station in the north Indian State of Himachal
Pradesh. The Central Tibetan Administration oversees the rehabilitation of thousands of Tibetan
refugees who followed His Holiness, the XIV Dalai Lama, into exile in India in 1959 and who
continue to flee Tibet.
To assist torture victims among the 2,500 refugees who escape into India from Tibet each year,
Tibetan authorities created the Tibetan Torture Survivors Program in 1991, which operates under
the Tibetan Voluntary Health Association (TVHA). The Victims of Torture Fund grant will help
TVHA continue to assist torture victims with medical treatment and rehabilitation services.
Although the program initially focused on providing medical treatment to Tibetan torture
survivors, it has expanded to offer more holistic services that include psychological treatment,
rehabilitation, and documentation. The program also trains healthcare personnel in identification,
management, and treatment of traumatized refugees.
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