“The long lasting resilience of individuals and communities affected by mass violence has not been given equal prominence as their suffering. This has often led to psychosocial interventions in post-conflict zones being unresponsive to local realities and ill-equipped to foster local strengths. Responding to the renewed interest in resilience in the field of violence and health, this study examines the resilience and post-traumatic responses of Indigenous Quechua women in the aftermath of the political violence in Peru (1980–2000).”
Blog post
Faced with an unprecedented pandemic, governments across the Americas have begun to respond to COVID-19 in a variety of ways, ranging from calling for states of emergencies, to imposing travel bans, to implementing quarantines. Stakes are high and the way governments respond to this pandemic could determine the future of millions of people.
Governments are ultimately responsible for protecting people and their human rights but have often failed to do so in the Americas. Deep inequality, structural discrimination, a tendency to revert to repressive policing, censorship, underfunded public health systems, and inadequate social security and labour protections long predate the outbreak of COVID-19 in the region.
This book’s goal is to dialogue with the large and growing community of professionals, government officials, activists, and academics who are engaged in our region to promote the work of confronting the authoritarian or violent past of our countries. Latin America has become, in fact, one of the most dynamic areas in the search for routes to transitional justice in recent decades.
In many ways, researching violence against women is similar to researching other sensitive topics. There are issues of confidentiality, problems of disclosure, and the need to ensure adequate and informed consent. As the previous quote from an interviewer illustrates, however, there are aspects of gender-based violence research that transcend those in other areas becauseof the potentially threatening and traumatic nature of the subject matter. In the case of violence, the safety and even the lives of women respondents and interviewers may be at risk .
Rather than starting out from a preconceived list of items that a gender sensitive reparations program has to abide by, it would seem that, in order to claim that women have been taken into account, a policy of reparations must begin by including the voices of women .
The objectives of the psychotherapeutic treatment are to provide psychological assistance to victims of political violence and torture, mental health training for people working in the human rights area and who are in direct contact with victims of political violence, psychological assistance to teams that work with victims awareness of the consequences of torture and political violence on mental health and other prevention activities (in Spanish).