Working areas

Sexualised war violence and other forms of violence against women and girls have life-impacting consequences on a mental, physical, spiritual and social level.
 
During many years of work in regions of war and crisis, medica mondiale, has worked together with local women experts to develop a holistic concept that aims to support women and girls in overcoming their traumatic experiences, to enhance social integration and the active participation by women in processes of social change and to protect them from further violence.
 

• A health consultation or medical treatment is often the first contact that a woman affected by violence can seek out without being stigmatised.
• Every project initially seeks to secure the material security of its clients. medica mondiale can either combat poverty itself or refers the women to other aid organisations offering vocational training and income-generating activities.
• Trauma treatment, psychosocial support and women’s groups are all ways that medica mondiale helps women and girls to overcome their traumatic experiences. Women often need help to become more psychologically stable before they can actively take part in the post-war efforts to reconstruct their societies.
• Individual support for the women on the one hand, and public awareness campaigns and human rights work on the other serve together as a coordinated ‘dual strategy’ with the goal of providing optimal support for women affected by violence and preventing future violence from occurring.
• Legal assistance is one component of medica mondiale’s interdisciplinary approach. It helps women to enforce their rights at an individual level.
• Training courses organised by medica mondiale serve to enhance the skills of specialists and occupational groups who in the course of their work have to deal with women and girls affected by violence – for example midwives, doctors, police officers and lawyers. This helps to prevent retraumatisation.