Secondary trauma and self-care for the community of CRSV and human rights practitioners

The collaboration with OHCHR aimed to support the UN Women-Justice Rapid Response-OHCHR community of practitioners who engaged directly in the investigation and documentation of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) and torture survivors: gender advisers/SGBV investigators, child rights experts, and interpreters.

The project involved devising and delivering a combination of webinars, reflective conversations in groups, and a Self-care toolkit for the participants. The approach was tailored to respond to the specific challenges faced by the practitioners in their practice with CRSV survivors, since they usually witnessed first hand the devastating impact of extreme trauma onto individuals and their communities.

Modules were developed to address secondary trauma and vicarious trauma, activism and wellbeing, as well as tools to incorporate in their professional practice in the frontline. Reflective spaces were also carved out to process those concepts in practice and to link them up with the psychological dimension involved in the relationship of the professionals with the survivors.