On 6 November 2025, SOS Children’s Villages Bosnia and Herzegovina organized the conference “Resolution 2533: Building a System that Will Permanently Protect Children from All Forms of Violence”, dedicated to strengthening mechanisms for prevention, protection and recovery for children who have survived violence and neglect, and to building sustainable and accountable child care and protection systems.
At the panel “Challenges in Ensuring Child Safety and Protection”, Dr. Mirela Badurina, founder and director of BHIDAPA and the BHIDAPA Academy for Psychotherapy, addressed the audience on behalf of BHIDAPA. She highlighted the importance of psychotherapy as a bridge between traumatic experiences and recovery, grounded in an understanding of the neurobiology of the brain and the behaviour of children who have experienced violence and neglect, and emphasized psychotherapy as one of the three key pillars of child protection, recovery and reintegration.
She further underlined that, although psychotherapeutic practice is internationally recognized as a distinct scientific and professional discipline, clearly separate from psychology and psychiatry, it is still not legally regulated in Bosnia and Herzegovina, expressing her conviction that this will be resolved soon, in the best interest of children, young people and their families.
She concluded her address with the message that a truly protective system is one in which safety is not defined by documents but by relationships – a system in which professionals bear witness to the child’s experience, lift from them the burden of guilt that was never theirs, and help restore their trust in themselves and in the world around them.
