Return to Rwanda: the woman dedicating her life to ending gender-based violence

As a 14-year-old, Sabine Nkusi witnessed the horrors of the genocide against the Tutsi in her home country of Rwanda. Fleeing Kigali with her parents, brother and sister, she saw women lying dead by the road, many who had been the victim of sexual abuse.

She vowed to God that if she survived, she would dedicate her life to trying to give dignity to women who suffered this unspeakable brutality. “I said to God … if I’m ever going to make it out of here … I want to be part of something … a vehicle to end that sort of violence.”

More than 30 years later, Nkusi is back in Kigali in her role as the lead on gender and sexual-based violence for the UK-based Christian development charity Tearfund. For the past decade, she has been running retreats where survivors are encouraged to share their stories, both with each other and with faith leaders, and to engage in advocacy, developing strong local networks. Her team has led 12 retreats, mainly in African countries, but also in Asia.

In an interview in Kigali, Nkusi said returning to the city to lead a workshop for 12 survivors of abuse “feels right”.

At the workshop, Francine* told how she had contracted HIV from her abusive partner after working as a sex worker in order to feed the siblings she was left to care for when separated from her parents during the genocide.

“You can feel very isolated because you are stigmatised,” she said. “But I’ve come to see that I am valued.” The act of sharing is seen as part of the healing process for these women. As Nkusi explained, often women are blamed for what has happened to them, and breaking the silence around their experiences is key to their healing.

Nkusi thinks it is possible to end gender-based violence in her lifetime, despite the grim data. According to the UN, one in three women globally have experienced sexual and gender-based violence, in most cases within their own relationships. The rate is closer to 50% in war-torn countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In Rwanda, 41% of women have experienced sexual and gender-based violence in their homes.

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As a Christian charity, Tearfund is arguably better placed than many secular NGOs to get its message through to more conservative church communities, where the Bible is often quoted to endorse the view that a woman must be subservient to a man. Such attitudes, according to Nkusi, make abuse – and victims’ silence – more likely. Her team also runs courses around the world called Transforming Masculinities that aim to challenge views about women within marriage, using the Bible and engaging couples in listening exercises.

Research by Stellenbosch University in South Africa found that in communities in the DRC where the programme ran for two years, rates of intimate partner violence dropped by more than half.

Many of the participants in Transforming Masculinities are often reluctant at first, including Edouard Buregeya, a pentecostal pastor from Kigali who attended the course four years ago. He said that he learned that his attitude towards his sexual relationship with his wife, Chantal, was wrong. “I thought whenever I wanted my wife, she had to give it to me,” he said. Following the course, he confessed to her that he knew he was behaving wrongly. Chantal described the moment as a “miracle”.

The couple have shared their experience with their church and their wider community and now help counsel couples going through conflict. They have also spoken to their three sons, and said they feel that there is a sense of a new generation learning from their parents’ journey.

Back in her London home, Nkusi said she keenly felt her responsibility as a mother to encourage her own young adult sons to think about what it means to be a man and how to view women in relationships.

She recalled sharing with her eldest son how not crying, being strong and a being a “provider” have traditionally been seen as defining traits for men. But now, she added, “the currency … is emotional intelligence”.

*Name changed to protect identity