Individual and collective healing: Advancing MHPSS strategies to build peace

Pact’s mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) programming contributes to a range of development outcomes, including improving individual and community well-being, resilience and capacity to thrive despite mental health challenges; sustaining the capacities of frontline service providers to support others; and strengthening health care and social support systems to prioritize resources and local infrastructure for mental health. Importantly, MHPSS activities also create a foundation for efforts to build peace and prevent violence within and between communities.  

As noted in the testimonial from our Ukrainian colleagues, Pact works in countries experiencing war and conflict or grappling with these histories, all of which can inflict long-lasting impacts on individuals’ mental health, disrupt families and social networks and undermine the resilience of communities. According to UNDP, collective trauma, especially experienced over generations, can rupture social bonds, undermine commonality and destroy previous sources of support. Drivers of trauma include violence, displacement, loss of family and property, harmful narratives and historical grievances related to conflict. Integration of MHPSS into peacebuilding efforts enables people to resist violence and build agency, ultimately leading to sustainable peace. 

Part of Pact’s global governance portfolio, our peacebuilding work focuses on addressing root causes of cross-border and ethnic-based violence, identifying shared interests that incentivize peace and working with governments, civil society and communities to build sustainable institutions and mechanisms for resolving conflict. In these efforts, we also integrate trauma healing interventions designed to support individuals and communities to address trauma and disrupt cycles of violence by fostering empathy, mutual understanding and reconciliation. Our programs also equip human rights defenders with MHPSS resources so that they have access to practical tools to support their own mental health and well-being as they defend civic space in complex, volatile environments.  

In Ethiopia, Pact has prioritized trauma healing interventions in its peacebuilding programming over the last decade by designing and contextualizing a community-based trauma healing curriculum. Originally designed under Pact’s Strengthening Institutions for Peace and Development II (SIPED II) project (2014-2020), the Yegarachin (It’s Ours!) curriculum promotes behavior and practices that reinforce mental and social wellness and build resilience against forces and ideologies that promote division and violence. Though the program starts with individuals understanding their own trauma and undertaking a personal recovery process, it is ultimately a community healing program. Guided by trained facilitators, Yegarachin community dialogues provide a safe space for participants to explore their individual and collective victimhood, grievances and the effects of trauma in their lives. In line with its commitment to do no harm across programs and to prioritize conflict-sensitive implementation, Pact also put measures in place to mitigate the risk of such exploration re-traumatizing community members. 

A 2019 evaluation of Yegarachin found that participation decreased levels of mistrust and increased support for dialogue as a means of conflict resolution. Pact further contextualized Yegarachin throughout implementation of the Mobilizing and Enhancing Local Actors for Peace (MELA-Peace) project (2022-2024). In a recently completed learning review of MELA-Peace, over 98% of assessed participants reported that trauma healing sessions improved their interactions with other groups. The learning review also noted that trauma healing activities included the highest proportion of women’s participation in the project (47%). Pact continues to rely on this community healing methodology in implementation of the five-year Ethiopia USAID Sustainable Peace Activity (2023-2028) to foster social healing and create an enabling environment for peacebuilding activities. To date, the Yegarachin materials have been developed in English and translated to Agnwaa, Nuer and Amharic, Afan Oromo and Tigrigna. 

Pact recognizes that the level of trauma in some communities and individuals may exceed the scope of any singular curriculum or intervention approach. For this reason, our peacebuilding programs also coordinate trauma healing interventions with access to additional or specialized mental health services. USAID Sustainable Peace is working to map mental health service providers and establish relationships for future referral services to address the range of mental health needs commonly associated with communities exposed to conflict, violence and displacement, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Pact’s Tanganyika Conflict Mitigation and Reconciliation (TCMR) project in the Democratic Republic of Congo has advanced a similarly integrated approach by establishing 18 ‘listening centers’ positioned within community health centers throughout Tanganyika province. These listening centers function as a primary point of access for community members seeking counseling. In addition to accessing trauma-informed care, survivors can find personal hygiene supplies, request support for case management and receive information about TCMR’s trauma healing interventions.  

The strategy of integrating MHPSS into Pact’s peacebuilding programs builds the capacities of actors engaging throughout entire peacebuilding systems: By supporting individual community members to understand their experiences of trauma and understand how trauma affects their lives, relationships and worldviews, Pact’s programs reinforce important linkages between individuals’ experiences with conflict and violence and communities’ resilience to conflict drivers. MHPSS interventions, therefore, represent an important element of our efforts to prevent and respond to destabilizing conflict around the world and to strengthen community capacities for peace.