• Peacebuilding and reconstruction

Peacebuilding and reconstruction

This issue of Critical Half focuses on psycho-social support for women in conflict and post-conflict societies. Included articles highlight the psychological and social difficulties encountered by conflict-affected women, and discuss ways to design effective programs that facilitate healing and encourage women’s active participation in the reconstruction of their communities.

Using examples from Sudan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Gaza, Croatia, and Nigeria, authors contend that:

• some women require serious psychological help to cope with their war experiences, but the majority are primarily affected by their daily struggles with social isolation and extreme poverty
• psycho-social programmes must consider a war-affected community’s own cultural perspectives regarding trauma and healing
• psycho-social support for conflict-affected women should be provided both at the location of conflict, and the place of refuge
• programmes must also reach out to service providers from the local community, who may struggle with the same traumas as their clients
• communities’ adherence to certain cultural traditions, such as widowhood rites that negatively impact women’s social and economic roles, may compound the difficulties women already face as inhabitants of a conflict region

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