Three days after theTsunami hit the war-torn Jaffna district in northern Sri Lanka, a mental health task force was formed. The approach of this task force, comprising a cooperative initiative between 18 humanitarian agencies, is described in this field report.

Keywords: tsunami, psychological first aid

Before the Tsunami

This field report describes the support and reconciliation work in a weekly multicultural and multilingual therapeutic group of African refugee women in a shelter in Johannesburg, South Africa. The problems of the participants, the therapeutic approach (which includes: team building exercises, guided imaginations, story telling, drawing, modelling and discussion) as well as the impact on the participants, are all discussed.

Keywords: reconciliation, support

In situations of protracted armed conflict such as in sub-Saharan Africa, there exists a strong tendency to describe rebel violence as a senseless war of ‘all-against-allThis ‘Hobbesian’ violence (a theory that people have the fundamental right to pursue selfish aims but will relinquish those rights in the interest of the common good) is often illustrated by the sight of drugged and gun-toting youths engaged in the harassment of innocent civilians. Their sole motivation appears to lay in the benefit of organized plunder.

We greatly welcome Williamson and Robinson’s paper (Intervention, this issue) on two counts. Given the specific goal of the Psychosocial Working Group (PWG) to promote debate leading towards practice development, we are delighted that one of our papers on conceptual and field implementation issues (Strang & Ager, 2003) is credited as a prompt to this thoughtful article. More importantly, we support the core contentions of their paper even if not, as discussed below, all details of their prescription for action.

The article by John Williamson and Malia Robinson (Intervention, this issue) represents a way of humanitarian thinking and acting that will hopefully increase its influence to dominate humanitarian response across all sectors. The authors argue for an integrated, cross-sector response to biological, material, mental, emotional, social, cultural and spiritual well-being. We agree.

Over the past 25years, humanitarian programming has increasingly included attention to the psychological and social impacts ofconflict. Over this time, a wide variety of approaches have been developed to address these ‘psychosocial’ issues. The authors argue that labelling these approaches, as a distinct and separate sector of activity is not helpful, either conceptually or programmatically.

Based on his experience as a mediator in many conflict areas, the author discusses twelve approaches to reconciliation. He concludes that no single approach is capable f handling the complexity of the situation after violent events, thus combining approaches makes more sense. The parties involved in the conflict should be invited to discuss these approaches and therefore be able to arrive at the best combination for their own situation.

Key words: conflict theory, peace work, reconciliation

Reconciliation in the aftermath of the history of violent conflict in Rwanda is approached as part of a set of deeply interrelated issues, such as individual and social suffering, justice, remembering and forgetting, truth-telling accountability, forgiveness, trauma therapy, socio-therapy, human rights, and development. The article is based on literature study, conversaions with people of all walks of life in Rwanda, and six years of research experience in this country of one of the authors.

Truth and reconciliation processes initiated in post-conflict countries have several interrelated objectives with the two key aims being to confront past injustices and to heal the suffering caused by such abuses. Structural constraints, however, often limit the extent to which justice can be achieved for all victims and their families. The present report is based on a review of' the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (known by its Portuguese acronym CAVR), a national initiative that was concluded in 2005.

This article illustrates the opinion that a bottom-up recondliatim requires, in addition to a top-down legal and political agreement between the parties, a complementary educational and social-psychological process. After an intractable conflict such a process will help the people involved to work through and let go of hatred, the desire for revenge, the mistrust, and the pain that were imprinted as a result of the conflict. A successful synchronisation of these two processes could diminish the danger of a renewed outburst of violence.