Defending Human Rights: A Resource Book for Human

• employment and job security
• working conditions
• contribution of the social economy
• early childhood care
• education
• food security
• housing
It is clear that mentioning social and physical
environments alone is not enough to address
traumatic effects and the expression of violence
has to be considered as a separate issue in order to
raise awareness of the breadth of its damage and
possible ways to approach the issue.
In an effort to address the needs of survivors of
violence during war and torture perpetrated against
individuals, families and communities, CCVT uses
as a framework the concept of psychosocial trauma
and destruction as defined by Ignacio Martin-Baro.
Martin-Baro was a Spanish Jesuit priest and a
psychologist working in El Salvador in the 1980’s.
His work has been published by the University of
Harvard Press. When he was approached by his
Harvard colleagues who wanted to translate his
work, he replied: “In your world, it is publish or
perish. In mine, it is publish and perish.” And indeed,
he was assassinated in 1989 by a death squad in El
Salvador in a massacre along with his housekeeper,
her daughter and a number of other priests and
intellectuals working in the field.
His theory explained how “trauma cultures” emerge.
This concept also provides a framework in which
CCVT implements its model of service delivery
to survivors of torture. It is a holistic model that
integrates services to meet the specific needs of
survivors of torture. It involves “in house” services
and a vast (complex) network of individuals and
organizations that provide services to CCVT’s clients
or connects them to other networks where their
needs can be met.
According to Martin-Baro, there are three
components of psychosocial trauma:
1. While the individual remains the principal victim
of organized violence, the nature of the trauma
rests in its social origins.
Torture and organized violence are primarily
social problems, and not the discrete acts of
individuals. It occurs as a method of social
control and because permission has been given
on many levels. The perpetrator has been given
permission by his or her direct supervisor, the
supervisor by his or her commander, and on up
the hierarchy. Society can also be complicit in
this through their silence and denial that these
actions are occurring.
2. Since the trauma is socially produced, both the
individual victim and the precipitating social
causes require treatment and remedy.
It is not enough to bandage the individual. If
she or he is then sent out into the very same
circumstances that allowed the trauma to occur,
then re-traumatization will occur. If torture and
organized violence is a social problem, then its
solution must also be social.
3. The trauma will remain chronic when the factors
that brought it about remain intact.
Psychosocial trauma includes an understanding that
organized violence creates conditions for “trauma
cultures” to flourish, when:
• Social polarization and inequality exist;
• Institutional lies and circles of silence obscure
social reality;
• Organized violence and war damage individuals
and their families and personal networks, but
also the societies of which they are members.
Denial is the main defense mechanism used by
the individual, the family and the entire society. It
operates in the following way, creating what Martin-
Baro called circles of silence:
At the individual level the survivor:
• Represses experience – he or she does not want
to remember.
• Wants to protect others from the painful event
– does not want to expose others to the ugliness
of the experience.
• Does not expect understanding or to be believed
– it is sometimes hard to comprehend how cruel
people can be to each other, and often, stories
of torture can appear fantastic and unbelievable.
This is often quite deliberate on the part of the
perpetrator – to do something so horrific that to
talk about it would be to invite disbelief. Also, in
some cultures, there are strong taboos against
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Defending Human Rights: A Resource Book for Human Rights Defenders | 2nd Edition