Narrative Responses to Human Rights Abuses

In May 2013, workshops were held in Chiang Mai and Mae Sot, Thailand, with a number of women’s organisations who represent different ethnic minorities from Burma/Myanmar and who respond to human rights violations. These workshops had two key purposes. Firstly, to share existing narrative ways of working and co-develop with participants new culturally resonant methods that can be used to respond to women who are struggling with the effects of human rights abuses. And secondly, to enable the women workers, who themselves are facing many obstacles, to tell their stories in ways that would sustain them in their work.

This publication describes the workshops, the methodologies that were described and originated in the process, and a number of collective documents from the words of the women participants. This publication also introduces ways in which collective narrative practices can be used to respond to women survivors of human rights abuses, and simultaneously to sustain workers in this field.