Youths Associations from around Kigali city are being trained in conflict resolution at the Kimisagara Youth Center in the Nyarugenge district. The training which commenced on Monday, was organized by the Kimisagara Youth Center in partnership with the German organization Germany Agency for Technical Cooperation GTZ-ded. The training is taking place under the theme, ‘Peace, solidarity and positive values promoted by African youths’. The Kimisagara Youth Center popular for hosting and promoting youth activities at the national and regional levels, is being transformed into a center for conflict management, explained Pascal Mwema GTZ-ded technical assistant. “In 1999, there was a regional conference that took place here at the youth center and the participants discussed making the center a regional conflict management one. It is upon this background that since last year we started training a number of youths on different issues in order to prepare them to go out and train others,” said Mwena. He continued to explain that some of the topics that have been covered include; training on Rwandan history, citizenship, mechanisms in conflict resolution among others. In this particular training, the youth were taught approaches to methods of conflict resolution preparing them to be able to identify problems that can hinder conflict resolution. Speaking to The New Times, Shyaka Mugabe Aggee a trainer explained that the aim of this training was to teach the youths on conflict resolution and learning on how to solve them without using violence. “Conflicts cannot fail to occur in a society but what is important is the methodology with which you resolve the conflicts, so the youth need to be taught to solve conflicts peacefully and living with their differences in peace,” he underscored. Nkurunziza David, one of the participants from Association de Jeunes Pour La promotion de Droits de l’ Homme (AJEUPRODHO), thinks that the training will be essentialat helping them in the advocacy for human rights which is what their association is all about. “We found out in this training that identity conflicts are not limited only to ethnicity but also on languages, status, places of origin among others, so we have been taught how to identify the actual conflict so to be able to uproot the problem completely,” clarified Joseph Nshimiye a member of Jeunesse Volontaire de Rwanda a youth association. Agnes Yankurije a member of Association Urungano also thinks that the training is going to help them help others to do away with conflicts which are a common phenomenon in society. The training will end this Saturday. Ends
