War and Genocide ... Restoring Humanity in Human Beings Faced with Extreme Situations

War and genocide are collective situations. They affect every society concerned by them, sometimes for several generations, for they leave behind material ruin, economic damage (economic regression into poverty and dependence, and development of mafia-type economies), cultural damage (destruction of the cultural heritage and of the education systems, exile or death of artists) and damage of the health of populations (physical mutilations and traumas, destruction of the health system and of living conditions). To end with, they leave behind confrontations with barbarity, weakened laws, the disappearance of the values underlying civilization, and the symbolic foundations of societies and individuals.

Three perspectives should be explored in this major field.

1. The issue of trauma, which should be healed in the same way as physical injury is by medical care

2. The symbolic dimension (forgiveness, collective memory, etc.)

3. Consideration of the extraordinary harm done to human beings by wars and genocides

Contact

Ecole de la Paix
7 rue Très Cloîtres - F-38000 Grenoble - France
http://www.ecoledelapaix.org