ICAR’s tactic is part of a strategy to convince the government to take responsibility for the nation’s past in order to build a better future. Many of the torturers from communist-era Romania escaped with impunity and some now occupy influential positions in society. Victims face a society in which substantial forces would prefer to forget the past — and its victims — rather than learn from that past in order to build a deeper civil commitment to democracy and human rights.

For more information on this tactic, read our in-depth case study.

Reconstruindo a Esperança (Rebuilding Hope), in Mozambique, combined traditional healing and Western psychology to reintegrate former child soldiers. Thousands of children were used as soldiers by both sides in Mozambique’s devastating civil war. Lucrecia Wamba, a psychologist with Rebuilding Hope, states that “child sol­diers lived through unimaginable horrors and they processed these experiences through the lens of the culture and belief systems of their communities. Their healing necessarily had to be processed through the same lens, in order to achieve both individual rehabilitation and community reintegration.” The organization recognized that neither traditional healing methods nor individualized Western psychology alone would be sufficient to address the needs of the children or the community.

For more information on this tactic, read our in-depth case study.

The International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) trains Indonesian NGOs in counseling skills and awareness of the impact of torture so that they can develop relationships based on trust, compassion, and caring with the victims of torture with whom they work. 

The Guatemalan Anthropological Team (EAFG) coordinates its efforts to exhume the victims of genocide and investigate their deaths with the local Indigenous populations. This helps the families and communities of the victims to confront the tragedies and their own grief while learning what happened to their loved ones.

The Treatment and Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Torture (TRC) in Ramallah, in the West Bank, organizes a free summer camp to rehabilitate traumatized children. The camp offers recreational, artistic and rehabilitative activities intended to help children support one another and deal with their personal traumas and fears.

The District Six Museum in South Africa spearheaded a land claim in which people ultimately recovered both the property and dignity they had lost under apartheid. It continues to be a space where people can collect, dissemi­nate and exchange memories of the neighborhood. It is also actively involved in promoting civic dialogue about humane cities in South Africa.

Peacemaking circles use traditional circle ritual and structure to create a respectful space in which all interested community members — victim, victim supporters, offender, offender supporters, judge, prosecutor, defense counsel, police and court workers — can speak openly in a shared attempt to understand a crime, to identify what is needed to heal all affected parties and to prevent future occurrences.

The Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) collects records of the victims and perpetrators of the geno­cide in Cambodia so that families and friends can learn the precise fate of the disappeared.

As part of the ongoing REMHI (Recovery of Historical Memory) Project, several dioceses of the Catholic Church in Guatemala mobilized their members to collect testimonies from victims of state violence. These testimonies were compiled in a report used to return that history to the affected communities and individuals.

Launched in 2000, the Child Soldier Project of the International Education and Resource Network in Sierra Leone (iEarn Sierra Leone) has created a web site on which former child soldiers can share their stories. The web site, www.childsoldiers.org, features the essays, poems, artwork and voices of former child soldiers and offers an on­line forum for discussion.