Guidelines development for the unity and reconciliation policy implementation

International Alert jointly with the national Unity and Reconciliation Commisssion (NURC) with support of Ikiraro Cy’Iterambere completed phase one of Umurunga project which helped to identify key persisting and, in some cases relatively new, aspects of the reconciliation challenges in communities, which manifest in many ways and are slowing the processes of unity and reconciliation ownership at community level. This was attached to the policy gap where it was found that key stakeholders , such as, ministries and government institutions, the private sector or civil society organizations (CSOs) that are not intervening in the field of peacebuilding do not understand their roles and have not made any efforts to adjust their interventions so that they contribute to unity and reconciliation process. Therefore, in partnership with the NURC, the core of phase II of Umurunga w’Ubumwe, is to produce evidence-based guidelines for NURC on the best or better approaches enabling key stakeholders to own and implement the policy. To do this, project’s main outcome will be that public service providers, policy makers and other stakeholders have increased understanding of how to integrate unity and reconciliation policies and practices into their areas of work. The above outcome will be achieved, principally, by developing a set of context-sensitive and evidence-based guidelines for effective policy implementation, including tools and best-practice examples, which will be shared with the NURC and targeted key stakeholders. A key component of the project will be to draw learning and evidence from three forms of grassroots intervention: firstly, community-based reconciliation dialogues; secondly trauma healing counselling; and thirdly, supporting communities to make joint livelihood and or economic investments with aim to not only relieve poverty, but to bond participants, who have different experiences of the genocide, together in relationships of interdependency.