documentation, human rights and advocacy

vivo promotes humanitarian and human rights work and defends the right of traumatized persons worldwide regardless of their nationality, race, religion, ideology or social group. vivo will consider the juridical implications of traumatization and build up a strong union with the Human Rights Community to support the work of the International Tribunal by providing support for eyewitnesses, caring for survivors in the 'Witness Room', adequately gaining and handling of testimonies and training of eyewitness interviewers on the basic principles of how to deal with traumatized interviewees in an acute as well as chronic stage through taking appropriate eye-witness testimonies from acute traumatized survivors after massive trauma and disaster in coordinated and better manner investigating and establishing comprehensive guidelines training of interviewers, translators and supervisors - basic ethical principles - validity for the juridical process
The treatment goals of vivo conducting and disseminating Narrative Exposure Therapy which leads to the construction of testimonies directly contributes to and promotes a joint approach of psychotherapeutic work and legal issues on a strictly science-based procedure.
The Center's treatment and training approach helps the individual to understand personal traumatic experience within a people's history.
This implies the importance of embedding and connecting individual traumata to the ones of the family, community and society.
The 'culture of story-telling', i.e., the various approaches of empathic acknowledging the survivor's personal narration (testimony) about his/her traumatic experiences (by the community and society), and of labelling it as a human rights violation, was found to be successful in restoring the victim's dignity and reducing the post-traumatic symptoms.
Interviews of victims and witnesses, as well as the testimonies of the survivors of human rights violations will be documented and may be used for advocacy purposes, international tribunals or published for educational purposes in another way. For vivo testifying has therefore necessarily juridical and psychotherapeutical implications:

-the psychotherapeutic role of testimony (inner healing through testifying)

-the role of testimony for reconciliation (relieving feelings of revenge by being able to tell the story to the public).

-testimony as documents for educational purposes (counteract forgetfulness, ignorance, denial).

-the juridical implications of testimony (how to support the work of the International Tribunal).

Finally, in the context of Human Rights Violations, testimonies and reports of witnesses and helpers and peacekeepers will be created, and might, depending on the client's wish and acceptance, be used for documentary purposes. They will be archived at the Frati Bianchi campus. In this way, vivo addresses violations of basic human rights encountered by survivors, witnesses and field teams, violations perpetrated or sustained by political or other organized and non-organized actors.