Family conflicts can negatively affect citizen participation in the decision-making processes, as the members don’t feel motivated to attend the meetings and other activities organized in their communities. This largely excludes them from participating in the democratic processes.
Never Again Rwanda facilitates grass-root communities to identify and solve the root causes of conflict, through dialogue, truth-telling, restorative justice, healing, and forgiveness. NAR in partnership with Interpeace are implementing a project entitled “Enhancing and Reinforcing Rwandan Citizen Participation in existing Local Government Consultation Processes and Platforms”. This project is supported by the European Union (EU), with the aim of enhancing active citizen participation in decision-making and problem-solving processes in various communities.
Under this project, NAR conducted various community radio dialogues in five districts where they discussed ‘Family conflicts: a hindrance to citizens’ participation in the governance process and development.’
During the dialogues, the participants explored the main root causes of family conflicts and narrowed them down to include poverty, ignorance, and failure to fulfill family responsibilities, lack of sufficient knowledge on gender equality, polygamy, gender-based violence, land issues, and negative mindsets.
Madeleine Uwimana from Huye District noted that the misunderstanding of the gender equality policy fuels conflict in most of the families and admitted that family conflicts hinder citizens from actively participating in governance as it deprives their rights to freely express their needs and priorities.
John Mugenzi from also Huye added that existing spaces can play an integral part in curbing intra and interfamily conflicts noting that evening roundtables (Umugoroba w’ababyeyi) has proven to be effective in helping citizens to live in peace within their families and their communities.
Furthermore, Florida, from Rutsiro District, underlined mismanagement of family wealth as the major cause of family conflicts while Emilienne Mukansoro, NAR’s Psycho-therapist in Rutsiro District emphasized that when families hold regular dialogue on issues at hand, they surely find ways and means to mitigate existing challenges.
Senior district officials that attended the dialogues including the Mayor of Nyagatare Mushabe David Claudian, and the Mayor of Rutsiro District Ayinkamiye Emerance emphasized that curbing family conflicts is the responsibility of both partners in a marriage and that they must respect each other in order to build peaceful families.