Executive Summary
This is the final report for the Promoting Peace: Mitigating and Managing Property Rights Disputes in Rwanda Project (Promoting Peace Project), covering the project in full (August 2013-January 2016). The project was funded through a cooperative agreement with USAID-Rwanda, with a total value of $1,159,142.
The goal of the Promoting Peace project was to increase legal literacy and respect for women’s land rights, and facilitate participatory and inclusive property rights dispute management in Rwanda’s Eastern Province. It aimed to achieve this goal through two objectives:
- Create an institutionalized network of CRPs (Community Resources Persons) trained to facilitate management and mitigation of land disputes in their communities, and
- Improve the legal, policy, and institutional framework for land dispute management by making it more responsive, participatory, and better informed.
These objectives were accomplished through implementation of field activities in a pilot project over the course of 18 months, and complementary learning and dissemination efforts. Because of the conflict between customary and formal rights to land for women, the pilot interventions focused on women’s intra-household land disputes, though efforts were made to engage the wider community through awareness raising and community dialogues.
The project was implemented as a collaboration between international NGO Landesa, the National Women’s Council of Rwanda (whose members were CRPs for the project), international NGO Search for Common Ground, and local NGO Haguruka.
At the conclusion of the project, a number of notable achievements emerged, including:
- Capacity development of partner organization Haguruka; and development of synergistic partnership between Haguruka and Search for Common Ground-Rwanda
- Capacity development of 26 Sector-level CRPs in legal literacy, and conflict resolution, communication, and leadership skills; and further training of Cell- and Village-level CRPs by Sector CRPs through a Training of Trainers (TOT) model resulting in 3,450 person-trainings of local women to serve as resources in their communities
- Dissemination of legal literacy and conflict resolution awareness through the facilitation of approximately 350 Community Dialogues with more than 9,400 total attendances (5,100 female and 4,300 male); airing of 90 community radio programs; and receipt of nearly 1,800 calls through an informational hotline
- Peaceful resolution of more than 400 land related disputes
- Increases in legal literacy around women’s land rights, confidence in exercising those rights, and changes in attitudes and perceptions around land dispute resolution
This final project report provides an introduction to the project, including background on the land context in Rwanda and the project logic model. Section I covers project administration and logistics, and Section II provides an overview of project activities and outcomes. Section III focuses on findings from project assessment and evaluation of impact on targeted areas. Section IV notes communications and media coverage of the project that helped to disseminate information about the project’s activities and impact. Finally, Section V shares insights drawn from the project, highlighting successful project elements, lessons learned, and related issues for further inquiry and consideration. Annexes to the report include “Most Significant Change” stories of project participants, and all assessment tools and training materials.