We carry out a wide variety of activities to ease the hardships faced by detainees. We regularly visit detention facilities to talk privately with detainees, so that we can assess their living conditions and see how they are being treated.
What is the goal?
A key part of our mission is to ensure that detainees are treated with dignity and humanity, regardless of why they have been incarcerated, and we work with detention facilities all over the world. Our activities are geared towards specific objectives, which include preventing:
- enforced disappearances.
- extrajudicial executions
- ill-treatment
- failure to respect fundamental judicial guarantees.
We strive to ensure that the conditions of detention are in line with laws and internationally recognized standards.
Working with us
If you want to join our detention teams, you must not only have the necessary skills, but also be deeply committed to humanitarian work and our principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence. Detention experts have to navigate complex political, social and cultural contexts while continuing to promote humanitarian values. You must be capable of assessing and addressing the needs of detainees while dealing with the emotional toll of seeing people suffer.
Despite the challenges you may encounter, working in detention facilities for the ICRC is a profoundly rewarding experience. Each time we succeed in improving conditions for detainees or putting a detainee back in touch with loved ones, it attests to the power of humanitarian work. If you’re looking to build an impactful career, working with detainees may be the right fit for you.