Training local security organs and community policing groups in order to have effective response to family conflicts and gender based violence (GBV) is seen as one of the best approaches to combat the two pressing issues.

On January 31, at Kinyinya sector, Gasabo District, different security organs (duty bearers) including community policing committees, agents of the District Administration Security Support Organ (DASSO), youth volunteers and Incuti z’Umuryango (Friends of Families) gathered to discuss their role in fighting GBV.

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Organised by Réseau des Femmes Oeuvrant pour le Développement Rural in partnership with UN Women and MIGEPROF, the dialogue saw over 160 attending.

According to Xaverine Uwimana, National Coordinator of Réseau des Femmes Oeuvrant pour le Développement Rural, all these security organs play a key role in combating gender-based violence in their daily work.

She said they also decided to engage their spouses so that they can take the lessons together regarding family conflict resolution and fighting GBV. She believes that leadership starts on a personal level before it extends to one&039;s family and eventually the community.

"We want these duty bearers to be exemplary so that other people can learn from them. We want them to solve conflicts and help in avoiding and fighting GBV when they also have peaceful families,” she said.

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Uwimana noted that they have been doing so since March 2021 through the "Empower and Include (E&I Project)" which engages the security organs in tackling gender based violence.

In their training, they involve youth volunteers because they are the future community as well as family leaders.

On why they started in Kinyinya and Mageragere sectors, she said they found out there were issues of family conflict and GBV as well as a need to build capacity of those in charge of helping people solve them by enhancing their knowledge on issues.

"Mainly," she said, "the conflict was based on property misuse, overspending by one spouse and other bad behaviours like taking too much alcohol and drugs as well as cheating."

Uwimana urged security organs and community policing groups to use what they have learned in their daily work and fuel discussions about the fight against GBV in their families, community gatherings as well as schools.

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Concorde Bahebayo who is in charge of security in Kagugu cell, Kinyinya Sector, said that through the training, they learned how to talk to a person who has a conflict with their family or someone who faces GBV.

"Before getting the training, we were doing it unprofessionally. To some of us, GBV had become like a culture where we would think it was normal if a man beats a woman. But today, we know it is violence and we advise those who still do it to stop," he said.

Bahebayo also learned that his wife whom he sees as unemployed because she stays home to do housework was doing valuable but unpaid work. He now helps her do house chores as he endevours to set an example for his neighbours.

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Pastor Diane Niyonshima, one of the members of Friends of Family (Inshuti z’Umuryango) in Kinyinya sector, said that before being trained, she and some of her fellows didn’t have the ability to solve the problems they were facing yet they were supposed to.

"Some of us were facing gender based violence in our homes or violating our spouses, but after being trained, we solved conflicts between us and started uniting other families," she said.

Niyonshima also learned to help teenage girls who faced GBV to access medical care and justice, which she said helped their community to thrive.