strengthening demand- and supply side local governance processes to ensure that local decision-makers incorporate and implement measures for GBV prevention and response into the district level development planning process, which is known as imihigo in Rwanda. This programming experience has highlighted the importance of strengthening women’s and marginalized groups’ participation in the imihigo process and ensuring that district level performance contracts include budgetary allocations for GBV prevention and response activities.
Influencing the imihigo process must however be understood as a long-term advocacy objective. To date, CARE Rwanda’s programming interventions have contributed to changes in the attitudes of local leaders in terms of their understanding of GBV as a development issue and their responsibility for ensuring downwards accountability to their constituents.
The starting point for this influencing process was the implementation from 2010 to 2013 of the Great Lakes Advocacy Initiative across six districts in southern Rwanda. This project aimed to increase national and local leaders’ accountability for the implementation of national GBV policy, as well as building the capacity of women and men activists to receive cases of GBV and to provide referrals to appropriate services and to advocate for quality, affordable and available services in the community. GLAI and subsequent women’s empowerment programming interventions by CARE Rwanda (GEWEP and Umugore Arumvwa – ‘A Woman is Listened To’) which also focussed on GBV prevention and response, provided the foundation for CARE Rwanda to build an understanding of the socio-political context shaping the implementation of GBV legislation at the national and local level and to develop effective working relationships with key ministries such as MIGEPROF.
Implementation of GLAI also involved