a new cultural heritage project involving survivors from different countries involved in the war. The idea was to work with wooden boxes originally used as ammunition containers by the armed forces of these countries and recycle them as Memory Boxes, or miniature display cases for life portraits of older people from the partner countries. Concretely, artists trained in reminiscence work invited individual elders to reflect upon their past lives and to explore ways of expressing their memories and feelings in a powerful visual form. The ultimate outcome was a mobile exhibition across the participating countries, in which a total of seventy boxes were put on display, with the final aim of contributing to deeper and better European understanding. The process of creating the boxes was both painful as well as emotionally and physically challenging for everyone involved. Nevertheless, the participating widows expressed a great deal of satisfaction and pride about what they had achieved, especially once their boxes were put on display for hundreds of people to witness during the multiple exhibitions organized by AHRDO in 2011 and 2012. Perhaps more importantly, many of the participants acknowledged a certain amount of healing after finally having had their stories recognized. Besides, the great deal of media coverage and public attention made an important, bottom-up contribution to addressing Afghanistan's war legacy. Why Memory Boxes in Afghanistan? Reminiscence is the act of recalling and sharing one's memories, and is an essential part of everyday life. Unfortunately, more than 30 years of impunity in Hence, the Memory Box initiative aspires to make the victims of Afghanistan the main protagonists in the creation of public memory about the country's long history of violence and human rights abuses. It is an invitation to reflect upon one's past life and express one's feelings and memories in a powerful visual form. Memory Boxes offer a window into the lives of victims, exploring personal histories through a reflective creative process that results in the appearance of physical spaces of remembrance entirely produced by the victims themselves. In addition, the Memory Boxes promote the notion of peace as a basic human right, the institutionalization of the victims memories as a key element of any peace building process and the request not to forget the past in order to prevent further bloodshed in the future. While each box makes a powerful individual statement, they simultaneously contribute to a more collective truth-telling endeavor the moment several memory boxes are brought together in the same space. In short, the Memory Box initiative is a tribute to the ordinary people of Afghanistan who seek to reclaim themselves as subjects of their own life narratives and thereby make a contribution to peace, justice and democracy in their country. How are the Memory Boxes produced? The Memory Boxes are produced as a result of an aesthetic process conducted by a facilitator leading the workshop participants through a variety of artistic games and exercises. Each participant can choose which moments of their lives they would like to focus on and how to represent these moments in their personal boxes using specific images or objects. The process usually takes 3-5 days and includes a full day of trust- and group-building exercises as well as activities that foster the participants' gradual discovery of their long-forgotten creative capacities. In addition, all exercises are used to promote discussion The Memory Box Initiative: Seeking to Break the Cycle of Violence and Tragedy in Afghanistan The Memory Box Initiative: Seeking to Break the Cycle of Violence and Tragedy in Afghanistan 3 Upon collective reflection, the AHRDO team saw the inherent link between these two methodologies and decided to combine them in what became Afghanistan's first fully victims'-led Memory Box initiative. Adapting both methods to the local realities of more than three decades of war, high illiteracy rates (especially among women) and a culture of female social invisibility, while using the organization's unique experience of working with grassroots participatory theatre, including countless confidence- and skill-building games and exercises, the AHRDO team began to work with different widow's associations in Kabul and Mazar-e Sharif. The results were highly encouraging, with dozens of powerful Memory Boxes full of personal objects and artistic artifacts created entirely by the women themselves. Afghanistan have generally prevented those at the receiving end of violence from engaging in such acts of sharing, consequently causing them further distress and an often described sense of abandonment and isolation. On the few occasions when attempts were made to look into the country's painful truth of the past, these resulted in elite-led, top-down endeavors with grandiose rhetoric and no concrete outcomes, let alone any form of redress for the millions of ordinary victims of war. 4