Fortalezas y Debilidades respecto a la Aplicación del Protocolo de Estambul por Psicólogos Peritos de la Fiscalía General del Estado, en el Ecuador, en el período 2023

Abstract

The United Nations Organization has developed the Istanbul Protocol, which constitutes a practical tool for the investigation and documentation of acts of torture by special teams of the justice system. Torture is an ancient and inhuman practice that totally violates those who suffer it. The objective of the work was to describe the strengths and weaknesses of the application of the Istanbul Protocol by justice operators of the State Attorney General's Office, in Ecuador, in the year 2023. The study had a mixed approach, the qualitative one predominated, the quantitative

one embedded; the scope was exploratory-descriptive, type of phenomenological and cross- sectional design. We worked with a population of 31 justice operators from some provinces of

Ecuador. Two qualitative techniques were applied: a focus group and an in-depth interview to obtain information on the application of the Istanbul Protocol; and in quantitative terms, a survey to obtain statistics regarding the cases with execution of the protocol, of torture and knowledge of it. The results obtained reveal that most of the weaknesses come from its application in this context, there is a lack of diffusion and training for the operators whose lack of knowledge can contribute to an inadequate response in the evaluations in the face of this type of event, considering the possibility of a specialized team necessary. in this type of research. The strengths point to the fact that it results in a manual that contains the necessary guidelines for successful practices regarding this phenomenon.