Since opening its doors in the mid-1980s, the Center for Victims of Torture has extended rehabilitative care to tens of thousands of torture survivors and others who have survived organized violence around the world; nearly all are refugees or asylum seekers. This support includes direct rehabilitative care and case management; resilience and skills training for communities and organizations; and advocacy to improve and expand opportunities for survivors to find safety, heal, pursue justice and thrive.

Over these years, CVT has witnessed confusion and misunderstanding from many in the public about the lives and challenges faced by refugees and asylum seekers. To help clarify misconceptions and shed light on the realities of the lives of torture survivors, here are facts intended to help dispel some of the myths about who refugees and asylum seekers really are.

People have the right to seek asylum. We know there are more than one million refugees in the U.S. who have survived torture and need this care. According to our research, as many as 44% of refugees and asylum seekers living in the U.S. have survived torture.

1. Definitions: Refugees and Asylum Seekers

Many people around the world face grave danger, even torture, in their countries and are forced to flee their homes. Once they do so, they begin a complex, often dangerous, journey to find safety.

Within the United States, the term “refugee” refers to people who have been determined to be refugees while located outside the U.S., and who are then formally resettled to the U.S. through the United States Refugee Admissions Program after rigorous screening and background checks. The term “asylum-seeker” is used to refer to those who are already physically present in the U.S. or who have arrived at a port of entry (like the Southern border) then seek a determination – through the U.S. immigration system – that they meet the definition of a refugee (and if granted asylum, would then be considered an asylee). Under U.S. law, it is a legal right for people to ask for asylum in the U.S.  Read the “Basics of Asylum” from Human Rights First here.

REFUGEES

• The 1951 Refugee Convention defines a refugee as a person who: “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of [their] nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail [themself] of the protection of that country.”
• Over the years, UNHCR has expanded this definition to include people forced to flee their homes for a number of additional situations, including human rights violations and internal conflicts, external aggression, and more.

According to the UN High Commissioner of Refugees in June 2024, more than 122 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes. Its report notes that of those, 72 million have been internally displaced and nearly 44 million are refugees.”

-UN High Commissioner of Refugees

ASYLUM SEEKERS

• Asylum seekers are people who have fled their countries seeking protection for a number of reasons, which can include torture.
• An asylum seeker applies for asylum once they are already in the U.S. or at a port of entry (like the U.S./ Mexico border), and the outcome of their application has not yet been determined.
• The U.S. government determines if an individual meets the definition of a refugee; this process can last for many years. While the process is underway, asylum seekers are legally allowed to stay in the U.S.

Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”

-Universal Declaration of Human Rights

2. IT IS A LEGAL RIGHT TO SEEK ASYLUM IN THE U.S.

The right to seek asylum is enshrined in international law.

In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was issued by the United Nations General Assembly to recognize the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.” Among the specific rights listed in the UDHR’s 30 articles were that no one “shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” (Article 5). In addition, Article 14 states, “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” The right to asylum was enshrined again in the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol.

The United States then passed its own federal law, the Refugee Act of 1980, which is meant to ensure that individuals who seek asylum from within the U.S. or at its border are not sent back to places where they face persecution.

At CVT, these two universal human rights are closely linked. We all have the right to a life without torture, yet it is perpetrated in many global locations. Where torture, armed conflict and persecution exist, people have the right to seek asylum. After torture, finding safety and a path to stability is critical for healing; thousands of survivors must leave their homes to find this kind of safety.

3. Refugees and Asylum Seekers are Fleeing Persecution and Torture

Asylum seekers and refugees leave their countries because they have no choice; the risks to their lives and their families’ lives are simply too great. Startling numbers of them are survivors of torture. Violent conflict plays an enormous role in causing people to become refugees. In fact, as of June 2025, UNHCR reports that 69% of the refugees in its mandate come from just five countries: Venezuela, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and South Sudan. Many countries host large numbers of refugees, in many cases millions of people. Iran, Turkey, Colombia, Germany and Uganda hosted the largest numbers of refugees in 2024.

There are many other reasons that people are forcibly displaced as well, including repressive regimes that use torture and persecution in an attempt to control populations. CVT’s clients often tell us that they did not want to leave their homes, yet they felt they had no choice in order to survive.

Read more about CVT’s clients here.

4. Flight from Persecution is Dangerous and Traumatic

Many CVT clients tell us they fled their homes with only the possessions they could carry, and they had to travel through more than one country to get to a safer location. These circumstances make them vulnerable to a host of dangers, including human trafficking, sexual assault, hunger and many more. 

Read more about CVT’s clients here.

5. Harsh Treatment of Asylum Seekers in the U.S. Compounds Trauma

CVT knows that many people arriving at borders have already survived deeply traumatic experiences, including torture. Harsh treatment at borders exacerbates these harms and inflicts new ones.

Some asylum seekers are detained upon arrival in the U.S. CVT clients have described particularly troubling treatment when detained in the custody of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the U.S. Southern border. According to Dr. Adaobi Iheduru, clinic manager and psychologist at CVT Georgia, nearly all of CVT’s clients who arrived via the U.S. Southern border were detained. Many have recounted horrific experiences while in detention including receiving inadequate food and water, as well as unresponsiveness to requests for medical care.

Many of the people arriving at U.S. borders have already survived deeply traumatic experiences. Indeed, per CVT’s own research, as many as 44 percent of refugees living in the U.S. are torture survivors. Other studies indicate a similar torture prevalence rate among forced migrants in high income countries. Harsh treatment exacerbates these harms and inflicts new ones.

Georgia, where CVT extends care to survivors, is home to some of the nation’s largest and most trouble-plagued detention facilities, including the Stewart County Detention Center and Folkston ICE Processing Center. The facilities have long histories of abuse, excessive use of isolation, medical staff shortages, inadequate health care (which led to unnecessary COVID death and infection during the pandemic) and unsanitary conditions.

6. Refugees and Asylum Seekers Face Barriers to Adapt to Life in the United States

Torture survivors are thrust into an entirely new culture upon arrival in the U.S. and must cope with these changes while experiencing symptoms of trauma and loss of identity, even many years after the abuse.

As CVT has reported, survivors are haunted by the experience of torture. Many find they are unable to stop thinking about the torture and must reckon with intrusive memories. They have frequent thoughts of suicide, deep depression and anxiety. Sleep rarely provides relief; nightmares are vivid, regular and terrifying. Survivors cross many triggers in their daily lives, such as the sight of armed personnel or something as simple as the sound of laughter, which can repeatedly bring back to life past traumas. Many also live with the chronic pain that results from having been beaten, bound, hung and any number of injuries inflicted by a torturer. All these affect survivors’ abilities to adapt to life in new countries and to begin rebuilding their lives.

In addition, many asylum seekers and refugees face daunting challenges after arriving in the U.S. Limited access to services, language barriers, lack of housing, inability to work in one’s field, long wait for a work permit for asylum seekers, unfamiliarity with systems, and different cultural norms are among some of the potential challenges asylum seekers and refugees face, compounding past trauma.

Despite these hardships, CVT clients are amazingly resilient and regularly go on to heal and prosper in their new communities. Indeed, they include home and daycare staff, personal care attendants, delivery drivers, grocery store and other food supply chain employees, and poultry plant workers — many of the roles needed on the front lines of the pandemic to keep everyone healthy and safe.

7. Children are Particularly Affected by Trauma

Because of the nature of torture, oftentimes children who accompany their parents who are fleeing persecution experience symptoms of trauma as secondary or primary survivors themselves. Their trauma is compounded by the policies and practices of receiving countries, such as detention and family separation. 

Children can be both primary and secondary torture survivors, the latter term used to describe those whose loved ones have been tortured, causing the secondary survivor to be vicariously affected by the trauma. A refugee client at CVT’s project in Jordan named Jana* was a primary torture survivor. She was only ten when she was abducted and thrown into an underground prison in Syria. After she was released, the family escaped to Jordan, and her mother brought her to CVT for help with her severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which included depression and anxiety. Another refugee child was affected as a secondary survivor: Tesfaye was only a boy when he escaped his home in Eritrea and went to the refugee camps in Ethiopia. There, he saw video footage of his brother’s murder by ISIS. He went to CVT Ethiopia where he found help with his nightmares, isolation and aggressive behavior.

Mohammad Abu Yaman, who served as a physiotherapist at CVT Jordan, led specialized group sessions with children and their parents in Amman. He found that children have both the physical and psychological symptoms of trauma that he saw with adults, as well as “symptoms that are unique to children and require a special approach—symptoms such as nightmares, social withdrawal, development regression, and increased attachment to parents.”

Detention has particularly harmful effects on children, effects which are compounded when a child is separated from his or her parents. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has written about the effects of detention on children, including problems with adjustment, developmental delays, PTSD, and more, stating that “expert consensus has concluded that even brief detention can cause psychological trauma and induce long-term mental health risks for children.”

8. Torture Survivors Can, and Do, Heal and Prosper

Over the years, CVT has been witness to the extraordinary healing achieved by clients as they rebuild their lives and become assets for our communities—culturally, professionally, socially and economically.

The journey for many asylum seekers and refugees is long and painful, from the moment they realize they can no longer remain in their homes, to the moment they arrive in a country willing (or at least potentially willing) to host them. Many clients tell CVT of their exhaustion upon finally coming for rehabilitative care. For some clients, like Kidane*, even going outdoors at all is difficult: “I was living a life of closed doors. I was isolated, always by myself.”

With the right support, healing is possible. Indeed, survivors of torture can heal from the physical and psychological wounds of torture with access to appropriate care and resources, which then allows them to rebuild their lives and further the significant contributions that several studies have shown refugees, asylum seekers and asylees make to economies and communities.

For example: When Esme first arrived at CVT, she was completely unable to speak to her counselor. When she was finally able to open up, she said that being separated from her children felt more unbearable than the multiple rapes she had survived. But Esme persevered. She continued with counseling and stayed strong as she waited years for asylum. Ultimately, she won asylum and was reunited with her children. Today she is happy, and the family is contributing to the community and building a new life in the U.S.

CVT’s clients have become assets for the community—culturally, professionally, socially and economically. As they realize the positive impact CVT has had on their lives, they talk about their own efforts to help others who have been tortured, bringing in new clients and helping spread the word about life-changing rehabilitative care. The healing that survivors of torture experience negates the vicious intention of the torturers. As David said, “The torturers’ words do not limit me anymore.”