As a child in Eritrea, you face the knowledge that you will be forced to join the military. You will never be allowed to leave that service. You will receive little pay; you will rarely see your family. As decades have passed under this practice, families have been shattered by the loss of these family members to conscription and by the staggering effects of poverty. Every day, children and families flee Eritrea in hopes that they may find opportunity, because they know they will not find it at home.
The refugee camps south of Shire, Ethiopia, are home to tens of thousands of Eritrean refugees, and this is where CVT Ethiopia extends its program of care. The majority of CVT’s clients here are very young, and some of these children are unable to cope. In recent months, four unaccompanied minors in the camps attempted to kill themselves; tragically one other child succeeded, as did an adult woman.
CVT clinicians moved quickly to provide support, conducting training on the principles of suicide intervention to 310 social workers who work with children. CVT also provided psychoeducation to 416 unaccompanied minors about depression and suicide. In addition, those unaccompanied minors who had attempted suicide received individual counseling and joined CVT’s group counseling sessions.
Eritrean child refugees participate as a group in a CVT suicide-prevention psychoeducation session.
For two years, CVT has extended interdisciplinary rehabilitative care to Eritrean refugees living in these camps. Over these years, the majority of torture and war trauma survivors who’ve been through CVT’s group counseling sessions have been young men, but many women and children also seek help from CVT after escaping the oppression and atrocities in Eritrea. The UN estimates that 5,000 people flee Eritrea every month. Individuals who make the decision to leave often know the dangers they will face, and CVT has heard the reports of the horrifying experiences they go through to get out of the country, including rape, extortion and abduction by false smugglers, and the nightmare of shoot-to-kill policies at the country’s border, which apply even to children.
CVT sees over 300 clients every year in Ethiopia, and they are very young. Since March 1, 2015, 52% were under age 18. 75% of these clients were male and all the children under age 12 were male. Overall, fewer than 10% of CVT’s clients today are over 35.
CVT also sees the extraordinary courage and resilience of clients in Ethiopia. In a recent example, Job Onyango, CVT psychotherapist and trainer, noticed that a 12-year old girl attending one of the minors groups was not doing well. This bright-eyed girl was very small and did not participate in the group until counselors intervened.
“During the first few sessions, I also noted that she was dressed in old dirty clothes, her hair was unkempt and her skin looked very dry.” Job noted. “Initially the other girls in the group would not call her by name and would instead just refer to her as ‘so and so.’”
The counselors decided to pair her with an active and vocal girl during small group activities, and this resulted in changes quickly: the more assertive girl told the others to call the smaller child by her name. She started participating in the group, wearing clean clothes and doing her hair. Job said she was not the same girl at all.
In this case, because this young girl was unaccompanied, she had to live with distant relatives in the camp. They had been mistreating her and forcing her to become their babysitter. When she began sharing her problems with the group, they invited her to stay in their group home for unaccompanied minors. They shared their food and clothes with her. Job said, “This new and clean, bright-eyed girl was a result of the group members coming together on their own and deciding to do something for her.”
It takes strength to take on the healing journey, and that strength can come in part from the community. Job noted that this girl came to visit the CVT healing center a month after she finished her counseling. She came back to check on the tree the group planted at the end of the sessions, and Job added that she “brought a friend to see CVT’s healing center where she got her strength back.”
###
Read news coverage of this story in VICE News here.
CVT’s work in Ethiopia is funded by a grant from the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.
Source: cvt.org
No comments:
Post a Comment