The BIM’s HuDi Team and Anti-Discrimination/Asylum Team, together with the organisation “Hemayat” – an NGO providing interpreter-mediated psychotherapy, psychological consultations and medical support for survivors of war and torture in Austria – are implementing an interdisciplinary research project that aims at analysing the protection of torture survivors applying for asylum in Austria. In the course of this project 15 cases will be presented and analysed relating to psychological and health care as well as the legal level. The results shall be used to identify possibilities for improvement in the treatment of torture survivors in Austria.

This project constitutes an innovation, as lawyers and psychotherapists/psychologists bring together their data and methodologies in order to arrive at a new perspective and analysis of empirical and theoretical material. This interdisciplinary approach allows for an illustration of how torture survivors experience the application of Austrian asylum laws and which effects the asylum procedures can have on the concerned individuals.