While it’s a known fact that peace is the mother of all constructive inventions, its attainment is still a necessity even where there is seemingly some semblance of peace. This is mainly because attaining peace avoids conflicts from escalating which leads to sustainable development.
Peacebuilding also helps create security and stability within our communities and throughout Rwanda at large. When there is conflict, life and property are destroyed, however through peacebuilding, our lives and properties are safeguarded.
You can imagine how many organizations other than Never Again Rwanda (NAR) are already in place making the foundation for peace. Last year, here at NAR, as a credible research-based civil society organization, we tirelessly worked our heads off to attain our objectives.
Despite the fact that this year will be a little more exciting we shall continue with our work of providing support to many of our projects which have already been running throughout last year including the ‘Societal Healing’ project, the creation of more ‘Citizen Forums’ and more ‘Spaces for Peace’ in order to create peaceful societies.
With the citizen forums, we are unlocking fears. At NAR we have recognized the fact that citizens are yearning for more platforms to air out their views. By last year we had already responded by establishing 10 Citizen Forums in 10 districts of the country that include Gasabo, Musanze, Karongi, Bugesera and Gicumbi among others.
The experiences of NAR from our different research findings indicate that revealing during the ‘Spaces for Peace’ dialogues promote healing. Our experts believe that the untold and unlocked wounds can contribute to future violence and long-term traumatic illnesses for generations thus the necessity for continued effort.
Rwanda’s youth make up to 60 percent of the country’s population. And since our foundation is the youth we shall continue to engage them using different tactics and platforms including the use of social media tools for social change.
Early this year we are excited to host yet another intake of our annual regional ‘Peace Building Institute’ which we are certain will attract youthful participants from the regional countries including Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and DR Congo. PBI as we refer to it will be conducted between the 15th to 27th of February with the aim of building a global network of responsible leaders who are equipped to identify the signs of conflict (genocide in particular) and who have the ability and drive to take action to prevent it, contributing to having empowered citizens.
In this year we shall also host the ‘International Conference on Innovations in Governance’ whose aim is basically strengthening the dialogue between the citizens and decision-makers.
This is our first edition of ‘Peace Insight’. We have concentrated on highlighting a little more about the PBI and the human rights activities and we are hoping that you shall find this is helpful in your work. For NAR updates on our programs and activities related to #Peacebuilding visit our website www.neveragainrwanda.org or simply follow us on social in our handle @NARwanda