Social Impact
Rwanda: Post-Genocide Challenges
- Rebuilding society after genocide
• Unlike post-apartheid South Africa or post-war Yugoslavia, Rwanda had to rebuild a society where victims and perpetrators of genocide lived together.
• As The Guardian (2024) stated: “People have no choice but to try living side by side again.” - Coexistence of survivors and perpetrators
• The coexistence between survivors and perpetrators has been an extremely difficult challenge.
• Despite the difficulty, it has been approached with sensitivity and achieved significant success.
Example
Rwanda: Community-Based Healing and Reconciliation
- Sociotherapy programs
- After the genocide, Rwanda developed community-based sociotherapy programs to address widespread trauma and rebuild fractured social relations.
- Mvura Nkuvure initiative
- One of the most notable programs is Mvura Nkuvure (“You heal me, I heal you”), launched in 2005 and supported by organizations like CBS Rwanda.
- Brings together 12–15 community members, often including both survivors and perpetrators, in weekly sessions over 15 weeks.
- Aims to foster trust, reconciliation, and psychological healing.
- Structured sessions
- Progress through phases of safety, trust, care, respect, new rules, and memory, enabling participants to share experiences in a safe space.
- Evaluations show that over 60% of groups continue meeting independently after the program ends.
- Many groups begin income-generating activities like farming or crafts to sustain cohesion.
- Promotion of coexistence
- These groups encourage coexistence between survivors and perpetrators.
- One facilitator noted: “People who once feared each other now eat together.”
- Programs are now replicated in neighboring countries dealing with conflict recovery.
- Mvura Nkuvure has become a model for grassroots reconciliation, emphasizing that healing and justice can begin in the community itself.
Tip
Rwanda: Relevance for IB Global Politics
- Example for Peace and Conflict studies
- Post-genocide reconstruction in Rwanda is a strong case study for IB Global Politics.
- It connects directly to the thematic focus on Peace and Conflict, particularly peacemaking, peacebuilding, and peacekeeping.
- Important limitation
- The genocide itself cannot be used as an example in IB Global Politics because of the lifetime rule.
Rwanda: Gender and Social Change after the Genocide
- Change in gender representation and roles
- After the genocide, women emerged as central figures in Rwanda’s reconstruction.
- With most adult men killed, around 66% of households became female-headed, compared to just 16% before the genocide.
- Legal and cultural reforms
- The shift elevated women’s status socially, politically, and economically, driving major reforms.
- New laws granted women rights to inherit land, own property, and access credit.
- By 2014, nearly two-thirds of Rwanda’s parliamentarians were women, the highest percentage in the world.
- Representation in governance and judiciary
- Women took on central roles in shaping post-genocide policy at both local and national levels.
- Gender equality was written into the Rwandan constitution, requiring at least 30% female representation in all government bodies.
- Education and demographic change
- Girls receive primary and secondary education at rates equal to boys, strengthening gender equality in education.
- The birth rate has declined, reflecting wider social transformation.
- Overall, the genocide catalyzed transformative social change, with women now playing a pivotal role in shaping Rwanda’s future.
Example
Statistics: Women in Parliament
- 1990: ~17%
- 1994: Dropped to 4.3% amid post-genocide turmoil
- 2003: 48.8% after the new constitution mandated a 30% quota
- 2021: Stabilized around 61–63% - world's highest level of female parliamentary representation.
