When disfigured soldiers returned from the First World War, the authorities wanted to reintegrate them into society once they recovered from their wounds or received prosthetics. At the same time, the first attempts were made to understand the psychological damage suffered by combatants (see Pat Barker’s remarkable novel Regeneration). The same cannot be said about […]

Hope is not a naïve ignorance of the world. Far from it. It is a feeling that moves us away from easy despair, to act courageously with hopeful action. Rebecca Solnit, American writer and human rights activist. Trauma knows no borders. The conflict in the Great Lakes region of Africa rarely makes headlines, although it […]

This month’s blog is written by Samuel Munderere, the director of our Rwandan partner Survivors Fund (SURF). More than three decades after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, the emotional and psychological scars for many survivors in Rwanda remain. Time has passed, but the pain of loss of family, of safety, of a childhood lingers […]