This year’s Conference “Victim Recovery: a Road of Many Routes” is an opportunity to discuss the different routes victims can take to reach recovery and resilience.
Some innovative ways have been developed for victims to get justice, and several paths can be followed by a victim to reach support and recovery.
This event will be the occasion to exchange best practices and experiences related to the many forms support can get and how it is provided to victims.
With this in mind, this year’s Conference will explore how to develop our justice systems in order to be victim-oriented, and the effectiveness of victim support services.
It will focus on all victims of crimes but will also have a specific focus on challenging our notion of vulnerability, emergency and collective events, victims of hate crimes, terrorism, cybercrime and sexual violence.
We invite practitioners, researchers, experts, lawyers, academics, victim support organisations, police, criminal Justice officials and any other persons working in the field of rights and services for victims of crime to submit proposals for a workshop.
Key priorities for papers under the themes mentioned above are listed below:
Developing our understanding of victims’ vulnerability
In this theme, we are interested in workshops that will challenge the concept of vulnerability.
How do we broaden our notion of vulnerability of victims? What do we mean by vulnerable? How do we identify vulnerable victims and design our systems to support their identification? What measures to protect vulnerable victims are available or needed?
Are there specific experiences and best practices put in place to help professionals in contact with victims who would become victims themselves?
Developing victim-oriented justice systems
This workshop will focus on how to organise your criminal proceedings to fit the needs of victims, as criminal justice systems of feel more focused on offenders and society than victims.
How could the criminal justice system improve the way victims are treated, from the standpoint of victims’ reception and their participation to the trial? How to ensure victims are informed throughout the proceedings? What measures can be adopted to guarantee victims representation during trial? How to make sure victims have the possibility to make requests during the proceedings?
Developing effective support services
How do organisations successfully make victim support services effective? How to ensure support services are available for victims and provide equal access throughout the territory? How to make sure victim support services are recognised as such by institutions such as the State, the justice system or justice professionals?
We are also interested in hearing about how organisations are creating new approaches to victim support services: what measures can organisations put in place to offer new services that would meet the specific needs of victims?
Specific crimes
Workshops will also be welcomed with respect to the following victim groups:
• Victims of hate crimes
How to legislate for hate crimes? How to improve reporting of hate crimes? How to address the specific needs of hate crime victims and the needs of communities affected by hate crimes?
Which kind of support is available for victims of hate crimes?
• Victims of terrorism
How to ensure victim-oriented emergency response planning, immediate aftermath response and long-term care?
How to make sure all victims in large scale attacks are identified and offered support? How to meet the needs of foreign victims of terrorism? Are there specific compensation schemes for victims of terrorism? How can we ensure victims’ return to employment?
What is the status of relatives of radicalised people?
• Victims of cybercrime
How does the impact of cybercrime and the needs of victims of online crime differ compared to other victims? How should law enforcement, criminal justice and victim support responses to cybercrime be adjusted to meet these impacts and needs?
• Victims of sexual violence
What are the different psychological repercussions on victims of sexual abuse?
We are also interested in the criminalisation of new behaviours and legal developments, as well as presenting inspiring practices for support, and the ‘invisible’ victims of sexual abuse (men, children, marital rape…).
• Victims of collective events and emergency
How to ensure immediate aftermath response and long-term care?
Should victim support services work in emergency situations?
We would also like to hear about the role of victim support services after natural and environment disasters, and the management of serial cases and sanitary cases (medicine, medical malpractice…).
A workshop session is 1.5 hours in duration and has to be given in English.
There will be a limited number of workshops in French (translation will not be provided). Please indicate in your submission which languages (English or French) you are able to present in and which language is your preference. We will seek to accommodate your preference, but cannot guarantee this.
Please note, several presentations may be combined within one workshop session, therefore accommodate the duration of your presentation accordingly.
We most welcome interactive and creative working methods. For example:
• Panel session (debate with expert panel and participants),
• Debating session (plenary debate with participant using voting cards or interactive voting methods),
• Working session,
• Short training or instruction sessions (introducing skills or tools),
• Educative games or simulations (roleplaying, quiz, association cards),
• Short movie/documentary,
• Casuistic session (discussion of relevant issues using real life cases or victims’ stories).
Workshop proposals can be submitted by filling out this form and sending it to vse2019@france-victimes.fr.
Submissions close on the 25th of March 2019. Exceptionnally, belated proposals can be sent until the 1st of April 2019.
The Programme Committee will review the proposals using the following criteria:
• Conformity with the overall theme and focus of the VSE conference,
• Interactivity and creativity of the proposed workshop format or working method,
• Equal representation of all the topics in the programme.
All submitters will be informed after the review and selection procedure is completed. We aim to inform all submitters on a rolling basis and final contributors will be informed by the 15th of April at the latest. The workshop programme will be published on the conference website after all submitters are informed.
If you have any questions, please contact vse2019@france-victimes.fr
