This well being guide is for individual self-care, and for peers and teams who work together. Each section can be tested or incorporated within regular meetings with a focus on caring for the carers. Humanitarians and people working in helping professions need to take care of themselves in order not to burn out and to be effective in their work. The exercises in this guide are for all humanitarian staff, volunteers and for recipients of mental health and psychosocial support services. If practised and used regularly, this catalogue of tried and practised tools can regulate stress, calm when distressed, promote sleep, and strengthen inner resilience. This guide is available in Ukrainian, Arabic, Portuguese, Bosnian and French.
There is never any question that damaged buildings, roads, power plants, and factories need to be repaired and rebuilt after a war, but the inner destruction in people’s minds is less obvious and is thus often forgotten. Encountering human evil in such a frightening form as during ethnic cleansing changes people forever.
Each year, countless women and children flee violence at home and take an uncertain journey in the hope of finding safety in a new country. While many escape conflict zones or generalized human-rights abuses, some also run from more intimate forms of violence namely, sexual and domestic violence perpetrated by men. Setting off on the journey is no guarantee of safety; many are vulnerable to gender-based abuse in transit and even at destination.
A disappearance has a doubly paralysing impact: on the victims, frequently tortured and in constant fear for their lives, and on their families, ignorant of the fate of their loved ones, their emotions alternating between hope and despair, wondering and waiting, sometimes for years, for news that may never come.
In humanitarian emergencies and conflict situations psychological damage has traditionally not been addressed, its extent and impact have not been well studied. It is only through a greater focus of mental health problems as a result of war and conflict, can coherent and effective strategies for dealing with such problems be developed.
This note discusses the relevance and design of mental health care interventions in post-conflict situations. Mental health disorders and psychosocial problems arising from conflict need to be addressed as part of post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation efforts. The note presents a conceptual framework for mental health interventions in post-conflict settings and illustrations from West Bank-Gaza, Bosnia, Burundi and Uganda (4 pages, .pdf, for historical reference).
The Centre for Women War Victims is a non-governmental, feminist, anti-militaristic organization founded in 1992 with an aim to empower women, reacting to war violence against women, as well as misogynic and nationalistic politics in Croatia and the countries of former Yugoslavia. By empowering women regardless of their nationality, ethnicity, religious beliefs, status, age and sexual orientation we contribute to improving women`s human rights, and women`s position in society.