Rwanda, a nation with a history of polarization and violence, is a now becoming model for peacemaking.
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“The key to good science is to listen well and listen honestly.”
In a previous podcast episode, Rwandan leader Freddy Mutanguha shared the story of his journey to finding meaning and forgiveness after dozens of his family members including his parents and sisters were murdered during the Genocide Against the Tutsi in 1994. His powerful testimony illuminates the importance of truth, remembrance, and community in helping genocide survivors and perpetrators find healing and peace today.
Elizabeth Dowling, PhD, Deputy Director at Tufts University's Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development (IARYD) joins Mutanguha for this companion installment of Stories of Impact podcast. Dowling speaks about what she and her colleagues have learned from her research collaboration with Mutanguha and his team at Aegis Trust.
Sites of remembrance where stories are told to willing listeners play a powerful role as an antidote to destructive fear and ignorance — even with something as complex as forgiveness and reconciliation in post-Genocide Rwanda.
Mutanguha is a CEO at Aegis Trust and Director of the Kigali Genocide Memorial. Aegis works to prevent genocide and mass atrocities worldwide, and to support reconciliation efforts across Rwanda, including the Kigali Memorial. Mutanguha led the development of Aegis’ peace education program in Rwanda and is now leading Aegis’ work to take this model beyond the borders of Rwanda.
Templeton World Charity Foundation funds a researcher-practitioner partnership between Aegis Trust's Kigali Genocide Memorial and IARYD at Tufts University to build a useful theory-of-change model and associated measurement tools informed from testimonials of Rwandans. [Learn more about the project here.]
Dowling and a team of researchers are using data that they collect to create science-backed peace-and-values programming, for Rwanda and globally, at the new Isōko Peace Institute.
At IARYD, Dowling's research explores forgiveness as a component of positive youth development. Her work for this project focuses on how personal and community narratives of forgiveness can inform broader efforts to promote peace and understanding. "I think if we can capture some lessons and capture them well, Rwanda has incredible story to tell and I hope people listen," says Dowling.
The oral histories of genocide survivors she's working with highlight the importance of listening to multiple generations to gain a complete understanding of the social impact of national trauma, as well as the potential for healing, especially for young people. Many of the testimonies are from kids whose parents and relatives were either perpetrators or survivors, and researchers like Dowling are examining intergenerational impacts of poverty and trauma, and potentially guilt.
Listening and learning from each other is a crucial part of the forgiveness process and of forgiveness science, says Dowling. "We need people to be able to sit across the table from each other or collectively at the table with each other or in a church or place of worship where we come together and we understand each other. The key to good science is to listen well and listen honestly."
“The gift survivors can give to the world is forgiveness. The gift you can give to yourself is forgiveness. The human contact, the sharing experience in the stories — it’s the most important thing we can offer to the world.”
Listening has empowered Rwandans to begin their individual and collective forgiveness journeys.
"The gift survivors can give to the world is forgiveness. The gift you can give to yourself is forgiveness. The human contact, the sharing experience — it’s the most important thing we can offer to the world," says Mutanguha.
As an individual, notes Mutanguha, the decision to begin the forgiveness process is "very important" to both physical and mental wellbeing. "Once you start the journey, you feel much more relieved." He says "embracing the forgiveness path is the best recipe to reduce polarization, discrimination, and hatred. If you have that element of forgiveness, prejudice reduces. You even start to value a human being as a human being. That value and the respect for others becomes much bigger when you start forgiveness."
He elaborates on how listening to and learning from each other impacts the community. "Most of people who I've seen embrace forgiveness, they learn something from someone else. I value the human contact in this process, to understand and experience and to hear other people who have done it, and what the benefit they got from it," says Mutanguha. "I'm talking from my experience, from survivors I spoke to, and those survivors who heard other survivors speaking. They had a desire to try it, and see how it works in their own life."
Dowling agrees. "I think Rwanda is teaching us this more so than any other experience. It's such a journey for each person."
Reconciliation villages in Rwanda, where genocide survivors and perpetrators live side by side, serve as a model for healing.
These communities demonstrate the courage and resilience required to practice forgiveness and coexist in peace. "What is so remarkable about Rwanda is that it was neighbors committing violence against neighbors," says Dowling. "Now it's survivors who are finding a process" to offer forgiveness.
These villages formed, explains Mutangugha, when "survivors and perpetrators decided to form them, together." In these villages, a survivor and a perpetrator may live next door to each other. Between those two houses there's a tank supplying water to both. The symbolism of this is important, Mutanghua says, because:
"If we can share water, we can share life."
Related podcast: Forgiveness & Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda with Freddy Mutanguha (podcast)
Related video: Forgiveness: A Pathway to Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions from Rwanda to the World (video)
Built upon the award-winning video series of the same name, Templeton World Charity Foundation’s “Stories of Impact” podcast features stories of new scientific research on human flourishing that translate discoveries into practical tools. Bringing a mix of curiosity, compassion, and creativity, journalist Richard Sergay and producer Tavia Gilbert shine a spotlight on the human impact at the heart of cutting-edge social and scientific research projects supported by TWCF.
