For more than 100 years, Switzerland has been host to international organizations. The Swiss TV station RTS has launched a series that introduces the people that work in these organizations. The latest episode of the series features Interpeace's Maud Roure, Head of Learning and Policy, talks about when she served as Programme Officer for the Great Lakes Region.

Interpeace's peacebuilding work in Rwanda

In her work Maud is supporting locally-led peacebuilding initiatives in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. The short video clip however focuses mainly on Interpeace's peacebuilding work in Rwanda.

In the short video clip, Maud explains some of the challenges that Interpeace and its local partner organization the Institute of Research and Dialogue for Peace (IRDP) encountered when they started working in the country deeply marked by the genocide against the Tutsi. In the beginning, it was not possible to bring people from different ethnic and socio-political groups together in the same room as they would refuse to talk to each other. So the local peacebuilders used video to collect the views of each group on remaining obstacles to peace and transmit them to the other group. Video was instrumental in breaking down barriers and engaging all groups in a dialogue process.

Maud explains: "One of the things that motivates me in my work is working together with the local partner teams. Our team members have all been touched by the genocide against the Tutsi in one way or another but really want to move the country forward."

Maud Roure

Today, Maud is Head of Learning and Policy and works closely with Interpeace's Global Learning Team to further promote evaluation and reflection across the organization. Maud initially joined Interpeace in 2005 and has since worked as Programme Officer for the Great Lakes Region and External Relations Officer.

You can watch the full video (in French) here.