Through the [Anti]Manual sobre trabajo psicosocial y acompañamiento a víctimas de la violencia y violaciones a derechos humanos [(Anti)Manual on Psychosocial Work and the Accompaniment of Victims of Violence and Human Rights Violations], we managed to systematize Fundar’s 10-plus years of experience in psychosocial accompaniment for victims, groups, and communities. The [Anti]Manual was possible thanks to a retrospective reflection with victims who had been accompanied by Fundar over these years, along with the psychosocial accompaniment staff of partner organizations that we have worked with on lawsuits and on promoting advocacy processes that led to the adoption of general laws on matters of victim assistance and forced disappearance.

In the current context, the “psychosocial perspective” is a category that has been distorted by the State’s victim assistance mechanisms, which, when faced with victims’ transformative potential, opt to handle the assistance they provide in a discretionary manner and, consequently, demobilize and fragment the victims. However, at Fundar, we believe that sharing a desire to change the world with the victims is the ethical basis and outlook of psychosocial accompaniment.

With the [Anti]Manual we aim to problematize the idea of a manual for accompanying victims, recognizing that it is not a unilateral process, as the people and collectives we work with also accompany us in an adverse and painful context, in which we mutually need each other in order to create change.