Label

Great Lakes

Goal

Interpeace's overarching goal in the Great Lakes region is to promote peace, stability, and social cohesion through strengthened resilience capacities for peace and reconciliation throughout the region. It engages community members, in particular women and young people, as well as decision-makers, by creating safe spaces for inclusive dialogues and collective activities. Through intercultural and intergenerational collaborations, Interpeace aims to transform the drivers of conflict and enhance the region’s resilience to violence.

Latest Highlights

Young people, who make up most of the population in the Great Lakes region, have been exposed to direct violence, including displacement, forced recruitment in armed groups, and sexual and gender-based violence. They also face the consequences of indirect violence, such as intergenerational transmission of trauma, lack of schooling opportunities, as well as lack of jobs and livelihood opportunities. Nonetheless, young people are often overlooked as critical actors in peacebuilding at the national and regional levels despite the unique perspectives, energy, and innovative solutions they bring to building peace and mediating conflict.

Interpeace’s Great Lakes programme focuses on strengthening youth leadership in peace processes in Burundi, the DRC (North and South Kivu), Rwanda, and Uganda. With local partners, Pole Institute, Never Again Rwanda (NAR), the Centre of Alert and Prevention of Conflicts (CENAP), Action for Peace and Concord (APC), Refugee Law Project (RLP), and Vision Jeunesse Nouvelle (VJN), Interpeace supports youth in harnessing and developing their leadership potential, capacities, and contribution to peacebuilding processes in the region, while also reinforcing cross-border inter-linkages among youth and with political and private sector authorities. The third phase of the cross-border youth dialogue programme in 2024 involved 150 youth, exactly half of whom were women.

Initiatives

Past initiatives

Resources

News