The International Trauma Treatment Program (ITTP) is a community-supported non-profit organization that trains practitioners to treat complex trauma inflicted by torture, war, and natural disasters.ITTP seeks to break these cycles and restore victims’ physical and psychological health through treatment and education.

The goal of the International Trauma Treatment Program is to undermine the use of torture through establishing an international network of practitioners who fight torture by transforming torture victims into survivors. Practitioners from war zones who participate in our program become prepared to treat, and to train other practitioners to treat, trauma survivors in their home countries. We thereby seek to leverage our resources by creating a snowball effect that greatly increases the number of practitioners worldwide that fight torture. The International Trauma Treatment Program was founded in 1998 as a not-for-profit corporation in the State of Washington for the purposes of providing communications between the various human rights groups in Olympia, Washington, and to provide in-depth training for professionals from countries experiencing war, organized violence, or other forms of political oppression. The origins of the International Trauma Treatment Program date back to the mid 1980’s, when our current Clinical Director and founder, Dr. John R. Van Eenwyk, helped to establish the Marjorie Kovler Center for the Treatment of Survivors of Torture, in Chicago. In 1989, Dr. Van Eenwyk presented his research at the Second International Conference of the International Society for Health and Human Rights, which took place in Cost Rica. After his presentations, Dr. Van Eenwyk was asked why the Kovler Center helped only those torture survivors who were able to make it to the United States. What about those who were unable to leave their countries?

In 1991, Dr. Van Eenwyk made the first of what were to become a number of training missions to areas of the world experiencing war or other forms of political violence. He has trained practitioners in Costa Rica (1989), Gaza (1991, 1993 (two visits), 1995, 1997), the Philippines (1994), Sri Lanka (1997, 1998, 1999, 2000), South Africa (1999), and Zimbabwe (2000). In 2001, he was the Guest of Honor at the children’s opera that is presented once a year in The Butterfly Peace Garden, in Sri Lanka. While there, Dr. Van Eenwyk continued the training of the staff that he has conducted there yearly since 1997. In June, he led a four-day round table discussion on ³Training the trainers² for the International Society for Health and Human Rights at their tri-annual international conference, held this year in Cavtat, Croatia.. On his first visit to Sri Lanka (1997), one of the workshops had to be concluded prematurely due to an outbreak of hostilities. It became apparent that bringing people from conflict areas to the United States for more concentrated – and less interrupted training seemed to be an alternative worth considering.

In 1998, with the help of dedicated volunteer clinicians in the Olympia, Washington, area, the ITTP was born. In 1999, we trained our first student, a Tamil from Sri Lanka. The student has since returned to Sri Lanka, is treating torture survivors, and is training other practitioners to treat torture survivors. In 2000, we trained a Singhalese student from Sri Lanka. We have now trained practitioners from both sides of the war in Sri Lanka. Both are dedicated to healing those who have been traumatized by the war in order to lay a foundation for peace in the future.

In 2001, we trained a student from Zimbabwe. A native of South Africa, he had been imprisoned and tortured there repeatedly over a ten-year period. Finally fleeing the country, he was granted asylum in Zimbabwe. At the time of his training, he was the Academic Dean of the Bishop Gaul Theological Seminary in Harare. He has since relocated to Botswana.

The ITTP is poised to make a unique and essential contribution to the healing of torture and other war traumas. Since its inception, the ITTP has adopted a philosophy of training that utilizes a collaborative approach between students and faculty. We do not simply ³program² students by giving them a kit of techniques that they can take back to their home countries and apply with success. Rather, we seek to develop students¹ own abilities to draw upon the resources available to compose training and treatment programs specific to a given time and place. The goal of the training is twofold: To provide practitioners with training and exposure to programs that they can implement in their home countries, and to put them in touch with their own personal experience so that they may better understand the experience of those they will be helping. Practitioners who attend our program thus become innovators, able to design unique programs to address the specialized needs of diverse groups and individuals. Moreover, practitioners are trained by the International Trauma Treatment Program to adapt their ideas and programs to people’s needs as situations change. Thus, as torture becomes ever more sophisticated, so do the efforts to undo its effects.