We support and strengthen theanti-torture movement
Our Solidarity Programme promotes survivor participation and aims to build a global community of practitioners working to end torture. It brings together a broad coalition of people, including survivors, civil society organisations, lawyers, human rights defenders, activists, journalists, and academics.
For over 30 years, REDRESS has strengthened the movement against torture by working in partnership with hundreds of organisations to promote collaboration, mutual support, and shared learning.
Our Solidarity Programme prioritises survivor participation, creating opportunities for direct engagement with decision-makers to influence laws and policies, and with others across the movement.
It also amplifies the combined impact of our more than 100 Solidarity Partners to hold perpetrators accountable, and secure justice and reparation for survivors.
We promote the meaningful participation of survivors and work with partners to:
Ensure holistic support and accompaniment (psychological, social, medical, and financial), where needed;
Facilitate participation in policy advocacy through coordination and skills sharing;
Co-create initiatives with survivors and NGO partners using robust methodologies.
As part of this work, REDRESS has:
Encouraged survivor participation in our policy advocacy, including by establishing a Survivor Advisory Group (SAG) who engage directly with the government in the UK;
Encouraged other practitioners to adopt survivor-centred approaches in their work, including through a practice note that offers guidance on survivor participation, minimising the risk of harm and re-traumatisation, and reinforcing survivors’ agency in human rights litigation and reparation processes.
Our recent work includes:
Survivors contributing to universal jurisdiction cases, sanctions advocacy, and reparation reforms by co-designing strategies and taking an active role in advocacy actions;
Survivors sharing their expertise and lived experience with practitioners;
Collaborative projects with survivor-led organisations documenting torture and supporting accountability initiatives
Develop collaborative communication initiatives to promote key messages against torture, and the successes of our partners to obtain judgments, convictions, and reparation for survivors;
Deliver organisational strengthening to key partners on finance, communications, and operations;
Provide financial partnerships for NGO partners in the movement against torture, to support and resource their work.
Our recent work includes:
Training 40 human rights defenders from around the world on the use of sanctions mechanisms, and 100 UK immigration practitioners and human rights defenders on anti-torture legal practice.
Providing financial partnerships to nearly 30 organisations to support activities such as documentation, litigation, advocacy, and litigation workshops.
Supporting partner-led litigation and advocacy efforts that contributed to the release of four activists in Angola and protesters in Nigeria.
Connecting more than 5,000 reparations practitioners worldwide through our Just Reparation bulletin in English, Spanish, French, and Ukrainian.
We support a global community of practice working to secure justice and reparation for torture, enabling practitioners to share experiences and strengthen strategic litigation. We:
Provide knowledge management and information sharing through blogs, newsletters such as Just Reparation, practice notes, casebooks;
Deliver litigation workshops and follow-up accompaniment;
The Just Reparation newsletter, which connects thousands of practitioners worldwide and features country-specific perspectives on pursuing reparation;
Practice notes that provide practical guidance on key aspects of holistic strategic litigation against torture, alongside examples of REDRESS’s practice;
Two litigation workshops in Mexico with Laboratorio de Litigio Estructural, bringing together lawyers and torture survivors to advance strategic cases;
Innovative Lawyers Awards supporting emerging anti-torture champions around the world (to date, we have granted 19 awards across 13 countries: Angola, Botswana, Brazil, India, Kenya, Lithuania, Malawi, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, and Ukraine).
