A big part of the work of those dealing with atrocity has to do with reading, listening to or watching material and stories that are potentially traumatic. Videos from conflict zones, interviews with close family members, images from a crime scene, and the list goes on. Whether it’s lawyers, documenters or journalists, what effects can these experiences have?
In this first episode (if you saw this ep dropping a few days ago – that’s right – we made an editorial error that we’ve now corrected, apologies!) of our mini-series on secondary trauma in international justice, we hear directly from the women in this field about how they have been affected by traumatic material and how they have learned to deal with it. And we also ask the experts to unpack the terminology, so what secondary trauma, vicarious trauma and burnout all mean.
You will hear from all of the practitioners below. Just a note – the interviews were recorded almost two years ago (in 2022) by our producer Margherita Capacci, who curated this series. Some of the interviewees have changed jobs in the meantime, and here you can find all the latest updates, but what they said back then doesn’t necessarily reflect their current way of thinking and role.
- Jodesz Gavilan is a writer and researcher for Rappler and its investigative arm, Newsbreak.
- Myrna McCallum is the host of “The Trauma-Informed Lawyer” podcast and offers training courses on trauma-informed engagement. She worked as a lawyer and served as an adjudicator in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement claims process, and Crown Prosecutor with the Ministry of the Attorney General in Saskatchewan.
- Mais Katt is an investigative journalist from Sirya, based in the Netherlands and focusing on the Middle East. She also works as a media trainer.
- Alexa Koenig is the is Co-Faculty Director of the Human Rights Center, Director of HRC’s Investigations Program, and an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley School of Law.
- Danya Chaikel trained to be a barrister in Canada and worked in the Hague for international institutions like the International Criminal Court and the International Federation for Human Rights. Since 2023, she has been serving as FIDH Representative to the ICC.
- Eva Buzo is the Executive Director of Victim Advocates International. She is a barrister practising at the New South Wales Bar primarily in criminal and migration law.
- Maxine Marcus and Kathleen Roberts are the director and co-director, and the founders of The Partners in Justice International. Max was a war crimes prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and she was an investigator at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Kathy was the Legal Director at the Center for Justice and Accountability, a victim lawyer investigating and trying atrocity crimes cases in the courts of third countries.
If you have been struggling with secondary trauma yourself, here are a few links we found useful: the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma has good resources on how to avoid secondary trauma but also links to peer support networks and self care tips, Rated R, set up by women who work in the human rights field during the Covid-19 pandemic to deal with traumatic content on social media also has great toolkits and links.
Later this week, the second and last episode in this series will look at how our international institutions deal with secondary trauma as well as expert tips on how to protect yourself.
