HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS. In various different settings around the world, vivo's therapists and researchers noticed, that, at the same time, most survivors do have a great need to talk about their painful experiences. It is difficult however to find careful listeners in societies, where a majority of members have suffered traumatic stress. As a consequence, vivo introduced Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET), a joint approach of treatment of survivors and documentation of rights violations, in order to overcome the victims' and communities' imprisonment in speechlessness. The procedure is based on Testimony Therapy (as developed by Lira and Weinstein in Chile) in combination with cognitive behavioural exposure techniques. Witnesses to severe human rights violations are invited to testify their traumatic experiences. In cooperation with the therapist they can restore their autobiographic memories about those experiences. In this way fragmentary memories are transformed into a coherent narrative structure: a testimony. This practice enables the processing of painful emotions and the construction of clear contingencies of dangerous and safe conditions, generally leading to significant emotional recovery. If the survivor agrees, the documents (testimonies) that result from this therapy can directly be used for prosecution of human rights (see section below) or awareness raising purposes.
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