RESST includes local services, public and private bodies and non-governmental organizations that operate in Italy for the rehabilitation of survivors of torture and other serious forms of intentional violence. Thanks to their experience and commitment, they help ensure specialized support and recovery paths for those who have suffered extreme trauma. Discover who is part of our network and their work in the territory.
Multiethnic Cultural Association La Kasbah
The Multiethnic Cultural Association La Kasbah is a non-profit organization active in Calabria, which promotes intercultural interaction and is committed against all forms of discrimination, intolerance and social exclusion. The association offers support, assistance and hospitality to migrants, protecting their rights in the workplace, family, healthcare, and in the procedures for regularization and recognition of the right to asylum. Since 2012, La Kasbah has coordinated a multidisciplinary team for the emergence, diagnosis and care of applicants and holders of international protection who have survived torture or extreme violence. The team represents a unique experience in southern Italy, a point of reference for applicants and holders of international protection throughout the region.
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Caritas Rome
Caritas of Rome, through the Cooperativa Roma Solidarietà (CRS), promotes and manages educational, social, and healthcare services in the capital, aimed at individuals in need and vulnerable conditions.
At the end of 2005, it launched the “Invisible Wounds” project, specifically dedicated to the care and psychological rehabilitation of migrants who are victims of intentional violence and torture. The primary objective is to help individuals recognize the horrors they have endured and the psychological wounds they have suffered. This process of recognition is essential to reclaim their dignity as human beings, give meaning to their traumatic experiences, and plan a future for their lives.
In addition to clinical interventions, the team is engaged in training, research, and screening of at-risk populations. Caritas’ support is based on a multidisciplinary team approach, with particular attention to social and welfare networks to facilitate legal and informational support for patients, as well as alliances and collaborations for advocacy efforts that build and strengthen effective care and integration processes.
Centro SAMIFO
The SAMIFO Center, sponsored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, is a regional hub for the medical-legal certification and rehabilitation of victims of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, including female genital mutilation. It is a “regional health facility of the ASL Roma 1 for the assistance of forced migrants as well as a point of reference for organizations that work for their protection as it uses an organizational model that, through integrated care pathways, is able to satisfy complex health needs”. Born in 2006 with a memorandum of understanding between the ASL Roma 1 and the Astalli Center, SAMIFO represents a consolidated reality of health and social integration, of collaboration between doctors and health and social workers of the public service and operators and mediators of the private social sector, offering medical, psychological and psychiatric assistance to people with a migrant background who have faced traumatic experiences in their own country or in countries of transit. The lines of activity are multiple: reception and socio-health orientation, general medicine clinics, psychiatry, psychology, forensic medicine, gynecology and obstetrics, orthopedics, nursing, the social help desk, rehabilitation activities for torture victims.
CIAC
Active since 2001, CIAC is a place for developing and experimenting with innovative practices in the field of reception, care and protection of migrants and refugees, in close synergy with other public and private social entities. For over twenty years it has been working to build activities and services that make the rights of migrants enforceable in a context of community welfare development and citizenship paths. This generative approach, strongly rooted in planning and research, sees Ciac collaborate with territorial institutions and local authorities to organize and develop a chain of services. In 2003, the pioneering research carried out within the project “Far from violence” focused on the issue of torture victims and their integrated care: from there, shortly after, the Interdisciplinary Socio-Health Coordination (CISS) was born – among the first in Italy – still active, between CIAC and AUSL PARMA, which has allowed – expanding its scope over the years – to address cases of high socio-health complexity (disabled, mental distress, victims of torture, victims of violence, victims of trafficking, minors undergoing age assessment).
Doctors Against Torture
Founded in Rome in 1999, the humanitarian association Medici Contro la Tortura – ODV (Mct) is a volunteer organization that offers assistance and care to those who have survived torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. McT promotes, together with its users, migrants who are often asylum seekers or without residence documents, a process of self-reappropriation and continuity with their lives before the trauma, helping them to rediscover the bond with both their community and the context in which they live. The intervention includes multidisciplinary assistance of a medical, physiotherapy, psychological nature and orientation to local social and health services, a work that relies on social, legal and cultural mediation support. Migrants who turn to McT are offered a space for participatory and multidisciplinary listening with interviews conducted by multiple professionals at the same time. McT documents and denounces the current reality of torture, which is systematically practiced in many countries, even if today all the nations of the world officially declare themselves against these practices. McT is a member of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT), an international network of associations working on rehabilitation and prevention of torture.
MEDU
Doctors for Human Rights (MEDU) is a non-profit international humanitarian and solidarity organization, independent of political, trade union, religious and ethnic affiliations. MEDU aims to provide health care to the most vulnerable populations in crisis situations in Italy and abroad, and to develop, within civil society, democratic and participatory spaces for the promotion of the right to health and other human rights. The action of Doctors for Human Rights is based on the militancy of civil society, the professional and voluntary commitment of doctors and other health workers, as well as citizens and professionals from other disciplines. Since 2014, MEDU has provided support to survivors of torture and intentional violence through multidisciplinary projects and interventions (medical-psychological, psychosocial) in Italy and Africa.
Doctors Without Borders
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is an international medical-humanitarian organization founded in 1971, providing medical assistance in over seventy countries to populations threatened by conflict, violence, epidemics, disasters or health exclusion. MSF has been working in Italy since 1998, assisting migrants, refugees and vulnerable people with the aim of providing medical, humanitarian, psychological and socio-health assistance. In Italy, MSF teams have been present at the northern and southern borders, offering medical and psychological assistance to migrants in precarious conditions. In Palermo, MSF runs a project for the assistance and rehabilitation of migrant survivors of torture and intentional violence, in collaboration with the University Hospital of Palermo, offering medical, psychological, social and legal assistance to patients. Since July 2024, a team has been providing medical consultations and psychological support to migrants in Agrigento, Sicily. Furthermore, while shipwrecks off the coast of Italy continue to occur year after year, a mobile team, composed of a team leader, a psychologist and intercultural mediators, provides psychological first aid (PFA) interventions to survivors and families of victims in different disembarkation areas.
NAGA
Naga offers, at the naga-har center, asylum seekers and victims of torture a place where they can feel at home and recreate a network of relationships, offering them support and a space where they do not feel rejected. Here they can receive assistance in the procedure for recognition of international protection, participate in an Italian language school and socialization activities to rebuild their identity. The Center is open from Tuesday to Friday afternoon for counseling activities and the Italian language school and on Saturday afternoon for socialization activities. The requests to which the Naga volunteers respond concern the asylum application procedure, access to services, and the possibility of appealing against the denial of the asylum application. When, after an initial introductory interview, the Naga Har volunteers deem it necessary, they send the asylum seekers to the Naga medical clinic, in Via Zamenhof 7A, where a team composed of a doctor, psychologist and psychiatrist examines the people and draws up, if necessary and at the end of a clinical path, a certification. From January 2016 to December 2024, 265 certificates were drawn up.
