Partner highlights

Harm Reduction International (HRI) is leading a project aimed at improving detention conditions by strengthening infectious disease monitoring in prisons. Among other things, HRI is developing a tool – in consultation with experts and stakeholders – to help human rights-based monitoring bodies, including the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (SPT) and National Preventive Mechanisms (NPMs), monitor health and infectious diseases in prisons.

The report mentions that the decade-long partnership has contributed to the improvement of the national legal and political architecture in relation to the state's obligation under the UN Convention against Torture (UNCAT).

Through a series of blog posts, DIGNITY consultant Jo Baker looks into the challenges, risks and discrimination faced by women imprisoned around the world.

Consolidated guidelines on HIV prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care for key populations released by WHO in December 2014, include AFEW’s client management programme as “an innovative approach to service delivery” and “programmatic good practice” in working with key populations. Collaborative client management “facilitates access to services and creates an enabling environment to access services.”

What are the issues, risks and vulnerabilities that face imprisoned women across the world? How is this being addressed by those who detain them? And is this well reflected in the attention they receive by the UN human rights treaty bodies? These questions lie at the heart of a new study by DIGNITY.

USAID’s HIV React project works to reduce HIV transmission among key populations in detention and post-detention settings in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.The project provides technical assistance, training, transitional client management and prevention services to reduce HIV transmission among prisoners and post-release inmates in these three countries, and strengthen the quality of narcology services and their linkages with AIDS centres and legal and social support services for prisoners and ex-prisoners.

This is a first common questionnaire on drug use among prisoners at European level. The questionnaire is the result of two years of work in the field of drugs and prisons, which has included the agreement on a methodological framework for monitoring drugs in the prison setting in Europe, the analysis of existing questionnaires and a discussion among high-level experts from several European countries and international organizations.

This field report describes Health through Wall’s experience working in the largest men’s prison in Haiti. Though there have been many reports of prison peer health education programmes, this field report further describes how peers can increase the (self-reported) interest and uptake of HIV testing.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) are renewing their drive to spur improvements in many foreign prisons where conditions are reminiscent of the Dark Ages.

The following is the first of a two-part feature on health and justice in a Haitian prison. Today Science Speaks looks at how a decade of work by an organization called "Health through Walls" has led to recognition of and responses to conditions there, with tools to diagnose tuberculosis among prisoners.

"I have seen prisoners who upon completing their sentences here, were returned to prisons in Haiti where conditions can amount to a death sentence"

From December 2012, DIGNITY has been working in preventing torture and rehabilitating torture victims in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. The name of the programme is "Freedom from Torture - Remedying Past Torture and Preventing Future Torture in North Africa" and it is financially supported by The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Often coming from situations of the greatest risks for HIV, the dangers confronting prisoners are multiplied when in overcrowded cells, lacking basic nutrition, health and hygiene and ability to protect themselves from infection, they are locked away, whether convicted or awaiting trial in some of the world’s poorest countries.

In the months after the earthquake, Health through Walls was able to screen every prisoner for infectious diseases who entered the prison as the place began to fill again. Within the year, the prison was once again grossly overcrowded and had progress disrupted in a riot during which a donated x-ray machine was destroyed.

The health care situation in many of the world’s prisons is desperate and although there has been standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners for over 50 years, most countries cannot achieve them.

Director at DIGNITY and member of UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) since 2014, Jens Modvig, has unanimously been elected as the new chairperson for CAT.

Phu Son Prison has launched the first Methadone Maintenance Therapy (MMT) Service Unit for Prisoners in Vietnam with support from United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Vietnam.

On 16 December 2015, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Moldova and prison authorities launched the medical waste processing equipment allowing the safe disposal of needles and syringes collected through harm reduction programme sites in prisons.

The posters cover medical confidentiality, treating detainees first and foremost as patients, providing health care on the basis of need, and treating detainees without discrimination.