Berkley Center

Background: As part of the Education and Social Justice Fellowship Project, undergraduate student Mariam Diefallah interviewed Immaculee Mukankubito, the deputy director overseeing operations and quality control at Never Again Rwanda, in June 2016. Mukankubito discusses the importance of peacebuilding and healing for Rwanda’s youth.

Can you please tell me about yourself?

My name is Immaculee. I am the deputy director of Never Again Rwanda; I am in charge of operations and quality control.

Can you tell me more about Never Again Rwanda?

Never Again Rwanda is a peacebuilding organization. We aim to empower citizens to be more active citizens in their societies. We have a particular focus on youth because they represent a big number of the Rwandan population; it is also because they are an easily manipulated population. We know that because in Rwanda, young people played a negative role. They were mobilized and manipulated by politicians. They were involved in killings during the genocide, but after the genocide, young people tried to reflect how as young people they can actually play a positive role. This is how Never Again Rwanda was created. We managed to engage not only young generations, but also adults to get together and create peacebuilding programs, to discuss different problems, and to provide a space to find attainable solutions.

Can you explain a little bit what your position entails?

First of all, I help with the planning process for short-term and long-term projects. For example, I spend time translating documents into projects that can be operational. I do that on an annual basis, but I also plan for some weekly and monthly events and projects. In that way, what I write also builds our database so we can learn from our past experiences and to document our strategies. I am also the person who connects some programs together. I am always creating connections among different departments of our teams here.

I am particularly in the charge of management and partnerships of our peacebuilding programs that connect Rwandans with Congolese and Burundians. I coordinate a lot of projects for this kind of programs, especially cross-border dialogues. As part of those programs, we do participatory research on identity manipulation and population movements; for example, we also did some research on stereotypes. We use these research projects in our dialogues, and other projects as well, to destroy the stereotypes and prejudices we have of each other in the region. We also use documentaries and visual productions to catalyze the discussions about those topics.

In your opinion, how does Never Again Rwanda help with reconciliation?

I think it is complicated to provide a literal definition of reconciliation in the organization’s view. During the genocide and the period which preceded the genocide, which was characterized by dehumanizing the Tutsis and polarizing the population against them, as a result the genocide was an extermination process because it destroyed the social cohesion in Rwanda, because it destructed our values and created mistrust and fear among our people. I do not know if you know about the history of Rwanda, but the people used to live together, and unfortunately hate speech before the genocide manipulated the people and caused a total destruction of our society. So reconciliation is healing. In Never Again Rwanda we see healing as one of the mechanisms to build the individual and also to create new relationships within the community. Reconciliation is a process to recreate and rebuild the social cohesion through building interactions and interrelationships between people and to recover the trust among the people, because we can only build our society if we are together.

How is the organization a part of Rwanda’s development?

When many people talk about development, they talk about roads, electricity, energy, but for me development is much more than infrastructure. Human beings are the root of development, because you cannot develop if the individual is not able to have access to the opportunities you are creating. Opportunities should be used to positively transform the well-being of the people and the society.

I think Never Again is contributing to the development of Rwanda because we are working in peacebuilding, and peacebuilding is essential in every area and sector of the society. Peace is not only security, but peace also in terms of the individual’s peaceful values, in terms of trust and building a society together. So our contribution is focused on the individual and the interrelationship among people within the community, which is a prerequisite for development, because we encourage people to be active citizens who are empowered, who can access opportunities and teach themselves how to develop. It is like school, where you go to learn how to use your knowledge in different ways to develop yourself, your country, and the society as a whole.

I have a question on how you understand healing. Do you think healing should be targeting only those who have lived through the genocide?

Healing targets two categories: the people who lived through that history, but also the youth now. We realized through our research that there are many people who have not healed and whom have wounds from the past and the history and the genocide’s violence. We target them, but we also target young generations because many of them are affected because of the genocide, but also because many of the youth in Rwanda have been living as refugees in other places abroad. Healing is a process that helps them overcome trauma and helps the society to overcome their wounds to be able to participate in the country’s development.

We know that there is trans-generational trauma and trans-generational shame. We have heard from the young generation that they feel shameful because their families are in jail because they participated in the genocide, or because their mothers were raped during the genocide as well. Those young generations are really victims. They do not have opportunities to embrace themselves or to share their emotions that they feel; they feel that they are stigmatized. So the healing process helps them to get together with other groups of different backgrounds so they can better understand themselves, so they can start building trust and starting working together with others. We also have young people whose parents were victims of the genocide, so the healing process helps them to overcome their traumas so they have the opportunity to integrate and be part of the society. Many of those people are fragile and vulnerable, but when they meet different groups, they understand better.

How do you think peacebuilding helps with justice in the community here?

We believe in transitional justice like gacaca, which was one of the mechanisms that helped Rwandans talk about what happened to become able first to know the history, to listen to testimonies, to give perpetrators the chance to apologize, and for everyone to be able to join the community once again. Some people did not know where their relatives were left behind after being killed, and gacaca gave them the chance to talk with the perpetrators and know where they left the bodies so they can go back and bury their relatives with dignity. Dignity is very helpful for healing and reconciliation, which helps with peacebuilding. For perpetrators, when they confessed it became easier for them to go back to their societies and to contribute to peacebuilding as well. Transitional justice proved that life after genocide is possible. Being forgiven by the people who lost their parents, for the perpetrators—it was extraordinary.

I also think a social justice aim is to fight against the inequalities in the society, because it is hard to have a long-lasting peace in any society. You can have development and infrastructure, but it is only when you have justice in your society when people become constructive.

Would you say different generations view the history of the genocide differently?

I work with youth, and I think there is a big difference, a difference in perspectives, because with young generations there are many opportunities open to them, and I think they have better chances in accessing those opportunities. So for them, the meaning of peace means economic development, access to education and employment, freedom of speech, and interaction with different people. While for elders, peace means justice, commemoration, remembering the history of the people they lost, talking about their traumas and experiences within themselves, because for them this leads to peace. So for them the meaning of peace depends on the perspective and backgrounds and events they experienced.

Of course there is also a risk of trans-generational trauma, but many people overcome that. This is why we look for how other societies managed in post violence contexts, and how they avoid and minimize the risks of trans-generational trauma, also how the techniques of healing they use and how it affects the society. We will actually discuss all of this in a conference next November, which will invite many people from different regions as well.

Would you say that difference in perspectives cause challenges or tensions between the generations?

Yes, it is a challenge. In April, we organized a conference with the young generations as the target group. The purpose of the conference was to prepare them for the commemoration period because in many times it is a period of recreating trauma because it causes many emotions. We prepare young people for this, and one of the issues highlighted during the conference is if the young generations did not experience traumatic experiences, what kind of relationships they have with themselves, with their identity when they hear the stories during the commemoration period about past ethnic divisions among people. How they will interact with each other?

In Rwanda the old generations are not used to communicate well with their children and to open up with them about sensitive issues. It is not common, because sometimes it is very difficult to explain to the kids what happened to the family during the genocide; sometimes it is traumatizing to the older people as well. Also, how can a family tell their children they participated in the genocide, and how their kids will feel about that if their father is in jail for genocide crimes? These things can easily create hate among young generations, so this is a big issue for us, because families find it hard to face these things with their children. It is difficult and can cause shame—there are many things.

Can you think of any other challenges Never Again Rwanda faces?

Working on healing in a post-genocide society make you see different experiences and different ways people use to cope with post-violence problems. During the genocide, we have to understand that the real perpetrators were the government at the time, and those who were killed were the scapegoats and those involved in the killings were manipulated and used, so in terms of reconciliation, many people only focus on making the survivors and perpetrators meet together. I am not saying it is not needed, but for healing to happen this is not the first priority, especially for those who faced death and who lost their families and property.

The best way to heal is to help people to overcome these feelings, through therapy, for example; psychological support is important. Many people are trying to move on, but inside they are suffering, and they cannot express how they feel. Many people are still stigmatized, especially in villages and especially women and children who were born out of rape. So we need to use psychology and other approaches to help those people. This is a challenge because different people need different approaches when it comes to healing, and bringing people together is not easy. This is why we research different approaches and try to use different strategies. Some children need time before they can join school; they need time to heal, to build trust again and to feel that someone cares about them. But healing is possible. It is possible.

Another challenge is that we use participatory research to engage people in discussing controversial issues and to help them participate in finding solutions. It is a very interesting process, but it is very difficult, and it takes a very long time. But it is very important for us to use this strategy, not just to do the research and to collect data, but to better understand and to engage ourselves with other people.

If you are going to choose one program only that you think has affected many people positively, which one would you choose?

I think our new program is very popular among the youth. For that program last year we had partnerships with people from Uganda. It is participatory theater. I personally think it is very interesting. In that program the youth work as focus groups on issues of identities and sub-identities using theater methods (and documentaries sometimes) to discuss peace. We had the event before on a university campus, and we were only expecting 200 students, but 1,000 students showed up. I think the youth like participating and expressing their ideas through art more than speeches.

How do you see the future of Never Again Rwanda?

I see Never Again Rwanda participating in peacebuilding and in healing practices. We are in a region where the challenges facing us are trans-borders. From what we experienced in the past, we saw that when there are killings or violence somewhere; the impacts of those acts affect other places as well. Exportation of violence is a big challenge that we faced before during the genocide, because Mobutu in the Congo and the French government supported the killings and extermination of the Tutsis, so the threats to peace can cross borders. So peacebuilding in the region has to be able to face that challenge and to include populations across the borders of the Congo and Burundi and other places, because one country cannot solve those problems on its own.