The research process for the project had three main elements: (i) Empirical/in-country research conducted by core project members in Australia, Sri Lanka and Nepal; (ii) Multi-disciplinary research into root causes and prevention strategies by a team of experts and (iii) Research on human rights education and training.
(i) Empirical/In-Country research
The purpose of our empirical/in-country research was to try and ascertain the views of relevant stakeholders in each of the target countries on current human rights practices, areas of concern and sites for potential enhancement. We also wanted to get as clear a picture as possible of the working lives, experiences, views and beliefs of our target groups, namely, security and law enforcement personnel in Nepal and Sri Lanka.
We therefore conducted interviews with:
- Police personnel
- Armed Forces personnel in Sri Lanka
- Armed Police Force personnel in Nepal
- Civil society representatives
- Medical practitioners
- Lawyers and Judicial personnel
- Victims/victims representatives
To enhance our data we also conducted the following activities:
- Focus group discussions
- Observation of police stations
- Observation of human rights trainings
- Visits to training facilities
- Literature reviews of governmental, non-governmental documentation of human rights issues and practices in each of the countries.
(ii) Multi-disciplinary research on the root causes of torture and prevention strategies
A team of researchers with internationally recognised expertise in relation to torture, institutionalised violence or preventative action was invited to participate in the overall project, both as individual researchers and as part of the team involved in planning the overall shape of the research. Each of the expert researchers was invited to prepare a report contributing to our understanding of both the root causes and effective prevention.
The specific questions they were asked to address included:
- What types of prevention strategies have been adopted in the past to address torture and ill treatment? What do we know about their effectiveness? What principles can we extract from such approaches for the development of more effective strategies?
- What are the risk and resilience factors for abusive practices and their prevention in police and military settings at various systemic levels, including: individual (dispositional) factors, family and community factors, organisational factors, societal factors, cultural factors and political, economic and physical environmental factors?
- How is it that torture comes to be normalised in the Police and Military in Nepal and Sri Lanka, or in certain sections or areas within those institutions? In particular, what are the organisational, cultural, political, psychological, legal or other factors of the institutions in which torture occurs, extending where appropriate to the contexts in which they operate, that cause, support or provide a permissive environment for practices of torture?
- What types of strategies and interventions are available to effect cultural, situational, organisational and psychological change? What are the best practice models in education for cultural change, responding specifically to the context of this project?
(iii) Research on Human Rights Education and Training
As this project falls broadly within the ‘capacity building’ dimension of prevention strategies, and most capacity building in this field has comprised human rights education and training, we conducted extensive research on the types of training and education that have been developed for military and police in relation to torture prevention and human rights. We collected and analysed a wide array of training material developed by international organisations (such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights), non-government organisations (such as Amnesty International) and national human rights institutions (such as the Asia Pacific Forum for national Human rights institutions), forming what we hope will constitute the beginnings of an international data bank of training material.
We also conducted an international survey of police and military organisations, sending out questionnaires in multiple languages asking them about the type of human rights training that they conduct and any evaluations they have done of those trainings.