Enabling Violence-affected Young Adults to Deal with Trauma - Phase II

The city of Hyderabad, Gujarat, India, has a long history of communal conflict. Muslim communities have experienced several decades of social, economic and political marginalization, especially in the old city. The 2001 anti-Muslim pogrom pitted youth with a strong sense of "justified militancy" against brutal state repression, resulting in widespread human rights abuses, deep psychosocial trauma, alienation and near-total civic disintegration.

This project builds on an earlier phase, entitled Minority Women Negotiating Citizenship (project 102867), which found that social recovery and integration in the aftermath of communal violence can be somewhat achieved through the mobilization of social capital networks, and that alienation can be reduced by building the capacity of victims to establish sustainable linkages with state and civil society institutions.

This project will endeavor to improve the quality and appropriateness of current reconstruction programs that target Hyderabad's Muslim community. It will do so by including Muslim youth as researchers and facilitators of dialogue aimed at identifying and solving community problems related to weak social integration in the aftermath of communal violence.