The 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda was one of the largest man-made disasters of the 20th century and deeply damaged the social fabric of the Rwandan society, to be implemented in 5 districts: Nyabihu, Musanze, Nyamagabe, Ngoma and Nyagatare.
With a goal “To reinforce social cohesion and sustainable peace through scaling up community-based healing initiatives”, The interpeace Programme funded by Swedish Embassy.
The Specific objectives are the following:}
a) Understand mental health, social cohesion, family, and livelihoods challenges, and related resilience capacities in each sector of the five districts.
b) Identify persons who may need support in the above-mentioned domains, so that they can be assigned to Resilience Therapy, Sociotherapy, Multifamily Therapy, or Livelihoods Initiatives according to their profile,
c) Identify community-based institutions and potential resources to support efforts for community resilience.
d) Understand gender perspectives and relations in each sector of the five districts, to help ensure that all project activities will be gender-sensitive and gender-informed.
e) Pilot of community-based methods for collective trauma healing and societal recovery.
The research found that The disorders including PTSD, OCD, depression, panic, anxiety are aggravated by other risk factors including emotional and substance abuse; sexual abuse; family problems; social tensions and intergenerational transmission of genocide legacies.
Furthermore, it has been found that there is an interlinkage among four dimensions our study: Mental health, peacebuilding and social cohesion, collaborative livelihoods, family cohesion and gender. In one aspect, some elements of mental health (issues) may constitute fragility factors to other dimensions; or variables of each other dimension may constitute either fragility or resilience or drivers of others.
Mental health is a significant contributor to family cohesion, social cohesion, and livelihoods. For example, genocide-related trauma was a fragility factor for social cohesion; mental wellbeing was a significant driver that increased food security index, whereas anxiety was a driver that decreased this index. It seems that it is a key component for the economic betterment.
The study findings reveal that, for reconciliation and sustainable peace, material and economic aspects as well as psychosocial and mental health issues of people’s post-genocide experiences need to be addressed.
Other studies have also revealed that recovering from traumatic experiences is an essential foundation for Peace Building, as when this foundation is not established, Peace Building activities will not generate sustainable transformation and sustainable peace.
