A specialized team of UNIFIL’s Italian Carabinieri recently organized a 6-week long water therapy treatment to children with special needs in south-western Lebanon.
The Italian peacekeepers applied the “Caputo-Ippolito Multisystem in Water Therapy Method” to 17 Lebanese children with autism spectrum disorders and generalized developmental disorders.
During the Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC) project of UNIFIL, from 18 September to 28 October, the instructors from the UN Mission’s Italian contingent had therapeutic focus on the impairment of social skills and communication disorders.
The "Caputo-Ippolito" method put into practice by the Italian Carabinieri is a global rehabilitation process aimed at stimulating, in a gradual and cumulative way, the different functioning systems – relational, cognitive, behavioral and motivational – of the child. Through a targeted assessment of the peculiarities and dysfunctional aspects of each child, the protocol uses aquatic elements to facilitate the achievement of therapeutic goals.
The CIMIC initiative of the Italian peacekeepers, conducted in coordination with local authorities and the local charity "Al Hanan," will continue in the future.
Between their peacekeeping duties, UNIFIL peacekeepers regularly implement various small-scale projects, at the request of local authorities and host communities, in their area of operation in south Lebanon. Such projects play an important role in strengthening the Mission’s ties with the host population and maintaining stability in the area.