Defending vulnerability

Our project focus

With empathy, trust, and respect, medico's partner organizations create spaces where survivors of torture, displacement, or sexual violence can regain their dignity and ability to act. The projects acknowledge the suffering of people who have experienced extreme violence and remain committed to solidarity—rather than leaving those affected to their own devices after a brief period of individual support aimed at building “resilience.”

Resist Connect and Stand Up! Titelbild psychosoziales Manifest

Resist, Connect and Stand Up!

Ein Manifest für psychosoziale Arbeit in Zeiten des gesellschaftlichen Zusammenbruchs | A Manifesto for Psychosocial Support in Times of Collapse

Against the privatisation of suffering

Unbearable

In a troubled world, psychosocial work means not simply enduring the conditions in the world that make people ill. Theory and practice of our cooperations.

Interview

A Safe Space

Aktivistinnen der medico-Partnerorganisation Phephisa posieren fürs Team-Foto.

In South Africa, the Phephisa Survivors Network organizes survivors of gender-based violence. But that's not the only danger these women face.

Namibia

So all good again now?

Ngauzepo, Hanging Tree, Namibia, Ovaherero und Nama wurden an solchen Bäumen während des Genozid ermordet.

German remembrance policy is patting itself on the back. In Namibia we are seeing just how deficient it actually is.

What comes after freedom?

A new Syria

Al-Hamidiya-Basar, Damaskus, Februar 2025

A report from Damascus and Rojava. By Anita Starosta

South Africa

Care work is doing change

An interview on a legal case for the rights of Community Health Workers (CHW) and the future of care relationships

Interview

A Safe Space

Aktivistinnen der medico-Partnerorganisation Phephisa posieren fürs Team-Foto.

In South Africa, the Phephisa Survivors Network organizes survivors of gender-based violence. But that's not the only danger these women face.

What comes after freedom?

A new Syria

Al-Hamidiya-Basar, Damaskus, Februar 2025

A report from Damascus and Rojava. By Anita Starosta

Namibia

So all good again now?

Ngauzepo, Hanging Tree, Namibia, Ovaherero und Nama wurden an solchen Bäumen während des Genozid ermordet.

German remembrance policy is patting itself on the back. In Namibia we are seeing just how deficient it actually is.

South Africa

Care work is doing change

An interview on a legal case for the rights of Community Health Workers (CHW) and the future of care relationships

Psychosocial work

Project Funding 2025

  • Strengthening and deepening transnational solidarity networks and political positions, and fostering mutual support within the psychosocial sector
  • Local answers, global problems: Exchanging ideas on transnational feminist strategies
  • Enabling the protection and enforcement of access to justice and victims’ rights / Verband der Beratungsstellen für Opfer rechter, rassistischer und antisemitischer Gewalt
  • Core support / FATRA e.V. – Frankfurter Arbeitskreis Trauma und Exil – Psychosoziale Beratung für Flüchtlinge und Folteropfer

Project Funding 2025: € 32,755.61

Projects – Projections

All articles on the topic of psychosocial work

18.05.2013 Struggles for solar plants, farmland and freedom

In several important project regions, medico maintains its own offices to coordinate projects and service partnerships. Three office directors describe what they considered the most impressive local events in 2012.

01.05.2013 The anxiety in the wake of globalisation

Economisation of life worlds is resulting in increasing mental suffering worldwide. Social problems are often individualised in the process, classified as mental illness and treated with drugs. Emancipatory psychosocial work is a critical challenge to these tendencies. The medico international symposium in May 2012 provided an opportunity for thoughtful discussion.

25.09.2012 Deportees fight against their stigmatization and the asylum policy of the EU

Stigmatization and discrimination of deportees has for a long time made the discourse on deportation a taboo in Sierra Leone. Those deported simply withdraw from society fearing provocation and false accusation from their friends and even family members

20.08.2012 Guatemala: medico partners focus on deep-rooted violence and racism

15.09.2011 Against the cycle of poverty and violence

15.09.2011 Emergency relief and coming to terms with the past

15.09.2011 An archive of crime

05.08.2009 If the past refuses to go away

Community work with survivors of the Guatemalan massacre

05.08.2009 Standing by those who cannot leave

Demilitarisation during a war, which cannot be named a "good war". Looking towards the post-conflict work required.

01.05.2009 Sierra Leone

**Project Funding 2012** - Legal advice offices in the Kono diamond region, Network Movement for Justice and Development (NMJD) - Cholera prevention and public education, NMJD - Public relations work on deportations from Germany and strengthening self-help, Network of Ex-Asylum Seekers Sierra Leone (NEAS)