CCVT - Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture

The Canadian Centre for Torture Victims (CCVT), founded in 1983, is a non-profit organization created by a group of Toronto doctors, attorneys and social-service experts, many of whom had previously worked with Amnesty International.

As early as 1977, they began to see survivors of torture in their activities, many of whom were in the process of seeking refugee status in Canada, and it was evident to the founders that these people required specialist medical treatment, counseling and legal aid in addition to asylum.

The Centre was the world's second of its kind, following Dignity, the Danish Institute Against Torture, which opened in 1982.