Human rights activists have always told stories in an unnervingly light-hearted manner about their experiences: the time an activist was almost kidnapped when investigating an execution, or answering too graphically when her friends ask what she has been working on. There’s laughter about being jumpy—startling when a car backfires on vacation—or imagining that torture is occurring behind a neighbor’s door when a child’s cry is overheard. Often these stories are told over drinks, late at night, on long drives, and they sometimes shade into serious conversation. Advocates swap stories about their experiences being threatened or detained, their inability to stop thinking about the images in graphic videos of executions, or re-hearing the voices of survivors telling their stories. What is frequently left unsaid in these discussions is that trauma—direct and indirect, personal and vicarious—has a real, serious, and lasting impact on the lives of human rights advocates.
We could find research on humanitarian workers, journalists, and social workers that documented depression, burnout, and secondary stress and trauma at high rates. Nothing comparable existed for human rights advocates.
I am relieved to be part of a growing community of advocates and researchers who have begun to think seriously about these issues. As a scholar, I am part of a research team working to better understand what has been, to date, largely anecdotal information about burnout, vicarious trauma, and depression among human rights advocates. When we began our work together several years ago, Sarah Knuckey, Adam Brown, and I could not find much information about secondary trauma among human rights advocates. We knew that some human rights organizations were beginning to address the issues, and that activists in some places had been using a variety of self-care techniques for some time. We located a fantastic resource: What’s the Point of Revolution if We Can’t Dance?, a pioneering exposé and resource written by feminist human rights activists Jane Barry and Jelena Dordevic that presents the stories and wisdom of activists from many parts of the world. In the psychology literature, we found a study of human rights workers in Kosovo that described the impact of human rights work among staff collecting human rights data. But what was missing was a scientific evidence base to ground efforts to respond to concerns about well-being among human rights advocates. We could find research on humanitarian workers, journalists, and social workers that documented depression, burnout, and secondary stress and trauma at unsettlingly high rates. But nothing comparable existed for human rights advocates. We decided to take a step toward creating an evidence base, documenting how human rights advocates are doing.
