A response to human affliction and social loss.

There is today a growing awareness both of the prevalence of torture involving a very large number of countries around the world and of the depth of the human suffering it leaves in its wake. Individual lives have been broken, the stability of families shattered, the psychic equilibrium of the children of torture victims disrupted. In the words of Simone Veil, former President of the European Parliament and herself an internee of the Auschwitz concentration camp: 'It is not only the rights of the victims which are scorned, it is not only their lives which are threatened, it is the very essence of these human beings that torture seeks to annihilate'. The Association for Victims of Repression in Exile (AVRE), among the first of such groups to be set up, was founded in Paris in 1984, and is housed on the premises of the H6pital de la Croix Saint-Simon. The fact that France has traditionally been a major country of refuge lends particular significance to the association's location in Paris. AVRE's primary on-going activity is as a centre that caters to the medical and psychological needs of persons seeking aid because they have suffered torture or other forms of ill-treatment in their countries of provenance; it also increasingly offers assistance to victims' families. Nearly a thousand people had been cared for at the Paris centre by 1990. All patients come to us on the basis of referral by humanitarian bodies, as well as by hospitals, doctors, lawyers and refugee associations. At present, more than five per cent ofnew arrivals are non-refugees who have been helped by human rights organisations to come to France for treatment subsequent to their release from prison. A second dimension of AVRE's activity consists of missions abroad to extend, in situ, where this is possible and desirable, the particular kind of aid which may be called for. One example is the establishment of a sustained programme of care provided in former French Guinea, in 1984-1985, to political prisoners freed after the death of Sekou Toure. AVRE fulfilled a very different type of need when a fact-finding team briefly visited The Philippines to ascertain the help required from abroad in caring for prisoners liberated upon the departure of President Marcos. Other missions have included on-the-spot treatment, given in co-operation with local doctors, to newly released Moroccan political internees and an inquiry, in 1988, into the phenomenon of torture in the political and social context of Zaire. The 'why' of AVRE's existence cannot be answered fully without giving due weight to its role in the international effort to bring together, analyse and compare knowledge and experience acquired in the treatment of torture victims and in activities related to torture. Hence, the association's close co-operation with similar groups in other countries and its frequent participation in international symposia dealing with the specific problems faced by practitioners in this field, or with the issues to which torture gives rise in a broader medical and psychiatric framework. This international dimension of the association's work also encompasses co-operative research ventures, as exemplified by AVRE's membership in ALFEST (the French-Language Association for the Study of Traumatic Stress), its participation in the European Concerted Action for coping with Disasters (EuroActDis), work on the prevention of mass reactions to natural and other disasters and its involvement in an international research project on the sequelae of violence in children. AVRE has been encouraged in the pursuit of its mission by the growing support it has received from leading figures in science, the arts and public affairs.