The Center for Victims of Torture

CVT PROGRAMS HALTED BY U.S. GOVERNMENT CUTS

Recent executive orders and actions have cut off funding for our life-saving work – effective immediately. We have received letter after letter from the U.S. government alerting us that we are ordered to “stop work” on the projects they fund. Most of CVT’s operations have been forced to come to an immediate halt, including direct care to survivors. The orders have forced us to furlough approximately 75% of our staff, with more potential cuts coming.

Torture survivors across these programs will face devastating loss, as their mental health support and community is interrupted. For some survivors, this rips away the safety they were building with CVT.

Our programs that do not receive federal funding, including those in Minnesota, are still operational. We are committed to doing everything we can to get our halted programs up and running again. We are still here, and we are working around the clock to minimize the impacts on the survivors we serve, but we can’t do it alone. Your partnership is more crucial than ever.

Don't close the doors on hope. Please help with an emergency gift today.

Learn more about the devastating impacts of the funding freeze at www.cvt.org/emergency

What We Do

More than 50,000 torture survivors are living in Minnesota today.

They are men, women and children who have endured devastating events and are now rebuilding their lives in a new community.

Through mental and physical health care, research, training, and policy advocacy we are working towards our bold vision for a world free of torture. We provide a bridge between torture survivors, the local community and society as a whole, working to restore the dignity of the human spirit one survivor at a time. 

Global Leadership, Home Grown in Minnesota

CVT was founded in 1985 in St. Paul. Torture survivors receive out-patient care at several locations, including our Healing Center in St. Paul. A team of healers provides medical and nursing care, psychotherapy, social services and massage and physical therapy. 

Our international healing initiatives are in refugee camps and post-conflict areas where few mental health resources are available. We train local community members and refugees to meet the mental health needs of their compatriots for the long term.

 We offer training around the world so that individuals and organizations can learn new and improved ways to provide healing services to torture survivors. We conduct rigorous evaluation and monitoring to ensure the work we do is effective, and share that research to improve the movement. And we demand justice from policymakers in Washington D.C. as well as locally in Minnesota and Georgia.

Our Plans for 2025:

1. Repairing the U.S. Refugee and Asylum Systems – America’s immigration and asylum system is badly broken.  On the legislative front, the hard work our members have put into building support for the Refugee Protection Act could finally pay off next year with congressional passage of this legislation that would ensure the U.S. gives refugees and asylum seekers the protections they need and deserve.
2. Providing Trauma Care at the Southern Border – Shocking scenes of Border Patrol agents on horseback assaulting Haitian refugees and the forced return of desperate asylum seekers prove the brutal treatment of people seeking safety in our country is an affront to our values.  That is why we must devote more resources to providing direct and secondary trauma care at the Southern Border.
3. Bringing Healing Care to More Torture Survivors – There is an enormous and growing need for CVT’s lifesaving care. The staff in our Healing Centers frequently have no choice but to tell torture survivors to come back some other time because we lack the resources to provide them with healing care.  That is why we are eager to open new Healing Centers in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and North America in order to serve more people.  
4. Rejecting Torture in All Forms – CVT has never been silent about government officials of any country or political affiliation conducting, condoning or defending torture.  The U.S. is still reckoning with the fallout from its post-9/11 torture program.  So CVT is still demanding reexamination of counterterrorism operations for possible prosecution of torture committed by U.S. personnel.  

You are a welcoming light for survivors of torture.