IGIHE

Bugesera: Over 40,000 people benefit from anti-GBV programme

0 20-07-2018 - saa 22:26, Jean d’Amour Mugabo

Assia Kabuto left Kamonyi District to get married in Ngeruka Sector of Bugesera District in 2011. Then 26-year Muslim girl blindly joined a drunkard and drug addicted man.

“My then fiancé deceived me that he was a Muslim too and I didn’t know much about him as we just met in Kigali. Coming to marry him, I found him under the roof of four sheets only. He was drinking a lot of beer, illegal gin and smoking weed. Shortly after getting married, he started coming home late at night and beat me seriously. I started leaving the house to sleep in the banana plantation whenever I heard him coming home drunk,” narrates Kabuto.

She produced her first baby girl a year later and kept sleeping outside with the baby since she was two months old.

“Then came Indashyikirwa project by Rwanda Women’s Network in 2015 and my peers elected me among others to be a counsellor for the gender-based violence victims. My husband fought hard my commitment but I invoked our village leader who helped to convince him. I later invited home my fellow counsellors to teach my husband. He heard the lessons but was reluctant to change,” says the mother of two.

She later invited her husband to the Muslim gathering from which he decided to join the religion and went home telling the wife he had abandoned taking beer, abusing drugs and all forms GBV he was doing against her.

“We started working together, we took a Rwf100, 000 loan to open a business and repaid it at ease, shortly bought a plot at Rwf250,000 and built in a house. We are selling products from there and we have a peaceful family. We have got a so good life that my and his weight has increased from around 50kgs to around 90 and 75kgs respectively. My husband was a security breaker but has since become the village security in-charge,” she adds.

Kabuto was testifying Thursday at the closing of Indashyikirwa project in Nyarugenge Sector. The four-year project has been running in two cells of each of Ngeruka and Nyarugenge sectors.

Etienne Kanamugire, a resident of Gihinga Cell of Nyarugenge, said he was a drunkard and used to exercise violence against his wife, Agnes Nyiransabimana, and as a result, they lived in poverty under the eight-roof sheet house but the couple has now got a decent residential house and two more houses aside, thanks to the teachings about GBV.

Funded by UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) under the coordination of Care International, the project trained 200 GBV counsellors and benefited at least 40,000 people in the district over the last four years, according to Annet Mukiga, the Progmammes Director at Rwanda Women’s Network (RWN) which implemented the project alongside Rwanda Men’s Resource Centre (RWAMREC).

Ms. Mukiga said the project was running in seven districts in the country and considering the results it has delivered, RWN is seeking more funding to scale it up in other parts of the country in a bid to eradicate GBV.

Léandre Kagorora Ngombwa, the Executive Secretary of Nyarugenge Sector, said the project has reduced cases of GBV in the sector, adding that only 27 women and four men reported GBV cases in the last two years.

The Vice-Mayor in Charge of Social Affairs in Bugesera District, Yvette Imanishimwe urged the counsellors to keep helping the couples in conflicts even after the project and reminded the residents that they cannot attain the development they and the country aspire for when they live in violence.

“As the district administration, we cannot limit this impact in Nyarugenge and Ngeruka, we have 15 sectors and want to share these lessons with all the sectors in collaboration with you, partners. Let’s fight drug abuse which is largely behind the GBV. Let’s fight any kind of GBV and we ask victims to report it to Isange One-Stop Centre,” she said.

Assia Kabuto, a GBV counsellor in Ngeruka Sector of Bugesera District was herself subjected to intense violence but her husband has turned his previous violence practices
Nyarugenge residents commit to fighting gender based violence in their sector and beyond
Léandre Kagorora Ngombwa, the Executive Secretary of Nyarugenge Sector, speaks to the gathering on Thursday
Bugesera Vice-Mayor in Charge of Social Affairs in Bugesera District, Yvette Imanishimwe (right) awards a certificate to Nyarugenge ES Léandre Kagorora Ngombwa for the progress in fighting GBV
Agnes Nyiransabimana alongside her husband Etienne Kanamugire recounts her GBV ordeal before and the benefits since her husband changed the conducts
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