Italy Fails to Uphold Torture Convention Obligations, Report Finds

Italy is not respecting the obligations provided for by the International Convention against Torture because assistance to victims is practically non-existent. Yet, it would be an obligation of the signatory States. This is the data that emerges from the ReSST (Support Network for Survivors of Torture) report, just presented to the competent UN Committee.

This is not simply a matter of ineffectiveness, but of structural non-compliance linked to the failure to implement protocols and guidelines approved at the central level but almost never put into practice by the Regions, along with deficiencies in the reception system, progressively stripped of resources and projects.

More than 18,000 victims without assistance

The result is that thousands of people, almost all of them migrants, subjected to torture not only in their countries of origin but especially in transit countries like Tunisia and Libya, remain totally without assistance. For 2025 alone, it is estimated that at least 17,800 women, men, and children will have suffered torture during their journey. But according to Medu, these are underestimated numbers: over 80% of the migrants assisted in the last 9 years reported having suffered torture or serious violence. And to pre-existing violence are added critical issues within the Italian system.

“The duration and complexity of asylum procedures, the inadequacy of the reception system, accelerated border procedures, and detention in repatriation centers can contribute to aggravating pre-existing suffering. In some cases, such conditions can constitute veritable ‘torturing environments,’ capable of amplifying existing vulnerabilities,” the report notes. “Violence – physical, verbal, psychological, and sexual – also manifests itself along the entire repatriation chain: from detention to imprisonment, from internal transfers to the flight back to the country of origin.”

Structural inability to identify vulnerabilities

A procedure from which torture victims – who at least on paper should be protected – are not excluded because, fundamentally, the system lacks not only the capacity to assist victims but also to detect them. The ministerial guidelines of 2017 have been adopted by only three Regions and have translated into nothing concrete. Even the ministerial Vademecum approved in 2023, which should have led to the establishment of vulnerability tables in every prefecture and standard identification and treatment procedures in that context, has essentially remained a dead letter. Vertical cuts that have reduced the reception system to a mere parking lot providing barely basic assistance, reduced the budget allocated to healthcare, and tender specifications that do not include specific expertise, the report explains, have done the rest. The system itself, states Resst, at best can “identify only immediately visible conditions (such as pregnancy, obvious disability, or minor age), while latent and complex vulnerabilities, including those related to torture, psychological trauma, sexual violence, or trafficking, remain largely invisible.”

Insufficient facilities and untrained staff

Even if needs are identified, the response capacity is limited. “Interventions,” it is emphasized, “are often carried out through informal networks built over time with third-sector entities. The involvement of public health services is often marginal or limited to administrative aspects,” also because there is no staff with specific training. The Sai, the second-level reception system that should guarantee training, health and psychological assistance, and integration, is totally insufficient compared to real needs: at least 4,700 people have been left out in the last two years. And even within the system, services – due to continuous cuts – are reduced to the bone. The few support pathways, almost entirely entrusted to third-sector entities, “tend to be interrupted, especially when the person leaves the reception system.” Unless, once again, it is associations and NGOs that patch things up.

On assistance to victims, Italy is in default

“The Italian system,” the report concludes, “shows a persistent asymmetry between the assumed obligations and their concrete implementation.” For Resst, “the absence of shared protocols and procedures, capable of defining an integrated operational model among the various services, produces fragmented responses, even in territories where collaboration experiences exist. This creates a ‘territorialization’ of rehabilitation that risks contradicting the universalistic nature of conventional obligations. In this context, torture victims with post-traumatic disorders often encounter considerable difficulties in accessing specialized care.” Added to these critical issues is “the weakness of early identification mechanisms for vulnerabilities, still reliant on practices not supported by binding protocols and widespread specialized training. Without a systemic approach to trauma, the emergence of vulnerabilities is often late or incomplete, compromising timely access to rehabilitation pathways.” And this effectively translates into abandonment.