Delegation: A Journey of Healing in Rwanda

Overview 

In 2023 Nobel Women's Initiative hosted a delegation to Rwanda focusing on care and healing as part of feminist peace-making.

NWI promotes a world transformed through a rejection of war and militarism, violence, and discrimination. We believe in an all-encompassing peace which goes beyond the absence of war, and includes gender equality, human security and sustainable development. Yet peace, while being an aim, is also a far-fetched concept while being in the midst of war or conflict.

Rwanda experienced a violent conflict among its citizens less than thirty years ago. How can all-encompassing peace be achieved in such circumstances? How does a country recover from a tragedy as awful as genocide? How does it, and its people, move on from hundreds of thousands of violent deaths, and hundreds of thousands of cases of brutal sexual violence as a weapon of war?  

In order to achieve lasting peace, inclusive reconciliation, rebuilding and healing are crucial. Rwanda has many great examples of healing to share. The delegation sought to discover what can we learn from Rwanda, and what can we do better in the future? 

NWI aimed to use the context of being in Rwanda to address these important themes from a feminist lens, to talk about how activists we have worked with have found healing in order to rebuild and reconcile, and build lasting peace.  

Nobel Peace Prize laureates Tawakkol Karman (Yemen), and Leymah Gbowee (Liberia) led the delegation.

As part of the delegation, participants visited women’s organizations working on healing and peace-building to learn from the experiences of trauma, healing and restoration. We also participated in the Women Deliver conference, the largest global convening on gender equality, which was held in Kigali in July 2023.

Women Deliver convenings catalyze conversations with stakeholders from around the world, break barriers, address challenges, and identify opportunities to advance gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights, and improve the wellbeing of girls and women, in all their intersecting identities. The conference brought together 6000 people in person, and over 200,000 on line under the theme “Spaces, Solidarity, and Solutions”.

Laureates

The delegation to Rwanda was led by two Nobel Peace Prize laureates:

• Leymah Gbowee
• Tawakkol Karman

Community Visits

We are grateful to the following organizations for hosting community visits as part of the NWI delegation to Rwanda. 

• Benimpuhwe Organization

• Association of Genocide Widows Agahozo / Association des Veuves du Genocide (AVEGA) Agahozo

• School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA)

• SEVOTA

• Jane Goodall Institute

• Kigali Genocide Memorial

• Nyamirambo Women's Center

Staff

NWI staff taking part in the delegation:

• Daina Ruduša, Head of Media and Communications
• Dildar Kaya, Advocacy Coordinator
• Muzna Dureid, Advocacy and Partnerships Manager
• Nicole Musimbi, Program Coordinator

Reflections

• Regaining Hope and Strength after Conflict
• Lessons from Rwanda

The delegation was organised and managed by Dildar Kaya. 

See photos of our delegation here.