Making the State Pay

In October 1991 the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) invited me to Budapest to take part in the first inter-national symposium in Eastern Europe on "Doctors, Ethics and Torture." During this symposium I met people from all over the world, people engaged in providing medical rehabilitation to victims of torture under many different circumstances and often in politically adverse conditions. This experience, along with the support I received from IRCT colleagues, encouraged me to create a non-governmental organization in Romania to address the terrible problem of torture. I knew there would be po-litical resistance, but I also saw that I could count on professional international training, management and financial support. The ICAR Foundation was registered in April 1992. Its name commemorates the Greek mythological figure Icarus, who needed help after successfully escaping from long imprisonment and finding that his wings did not survive the heat of the sun. Our logo contains the wings as a symbolic representation of the Icarus.

We began to search for resources that would allow us to provide services for the thousands of torture survivors in Romania.Throughout the subsequent decade of work, we have found our international colleagues and donors to be crucial. The treatment and care of torture survivors, however, should not depend on the interna-tional community. We believe that this work is the moral and political responsibility of the state itself. What I will describe in this notebook is our long-term strategy to pressure and persuade Romanian local and central governments to start accepting this responsibility.

We opened our first center in 1993 with only three doctors, two supporting staff, and a budget of US$20,000. We saw 85 clients, and our private and international supporters covered all expenses. In 1994 and 1995 our attempts to mobilize public resources began to succeed as we convinced local government officials to provide premises for our operations; we now estimate the value of this local government contribution at over US$100,000 per year. More recently we also obtained government support in prescribing free medicines for our clients – a public contribution worth over US$150,000 per year. By 2002, the ICAR Foundation had grown to three centers with a staff of more than 50. We provide services for 2,000 clients and receive annual international contributions of US$300,000.

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