Esset Samatova is a psychologist and MHPSS and protection practitioner with more than 13 years of professional experience across psychology, human rights, and psychosocial support.
Her work focuses on the intersection of mental health, protection, and human rights, particularly the psychosocial impact of chronic threat, repression, discrimination, online harassment, and other pressures faced by human rights defenders and civil society actors. She has provided psychological support and developed and facilitated trainings on resilience, burnout prevention and recovery, risk analysis, online harassment, sustainable activism, and psychosocial wellbeing for activists and organisations working in high-pressure environments.
Her work on the wellbeing of human rights defenders includes co-authoring the 2019 Peer Care: Defenders Taking Responsibility for Each Other’s Well-Being, in Solidarity manual. The manual was developed following research with 127 civil society activists from the North Caucasus and was designed to strengthen peer support, prevent burnout, and promote psychological wellbeing among human rights defenders.
Esset is also the creator of a transformational game addressing burnout prevention, psychological resilience, and recovery of personal resources. Her broader professional interests include integrating MHPSS more systematically into protection practice and developing practical approaches that address both individual psychological needs and the external conditions affecting human rights defenders.
She has contributed to international discussions on human rights defender protection and wellbeing, including at the United Nations in Geneva. In 2022, she received the Seán MacBride Peace Prize for her work on peace, women’s rights, and human rights.
Selected Publications and Professional Resources
How Repression Erodes Collective Agency.
OpenGlobalRights, 2026.
https://www.openglobalrights.org/how-repression-erodes-collective-agency/
Author profile:
https://www.openglobalrights.org/esset-samatova/
Peer Care: Defenders Taking Responsibility for Each Other’s Well-Being, in Solidarity.
Co-author, 2019.
Developed by Resource Center “Development” and Young Women Development Groups in the North Caucasus, with support from Civil Rights Defenders.
PDF available upon request.
