Emmanuel Sarabwe has an MA degree of Social Work and Social administration from the Uganda Christian University in Kabale, Uganda, and a second MA degree of Human Rights Gender and Conflict in Social Justice Perspective from the International Institute of Social Studies in the Hague, The Netherlands.  Since 2005, he has been working for successive programs of Community Based Sociotherapy (CBS Rwanda), supporting Rwandans to constructively deal with the consequences of the genocide against the Tutsi. He conducted applied research in the areas of family dynamism, psychosocial life, forgiveness and peacebuilding.

Emmanuel is registered as PhD student at African Study Centre Leiden in Netherlands with a research topic: Peacebuilding from below: Positionality of family and community members in restorative justice in post-genocide in Rwanda. The research will explore 1) whether and how the family and the community becoming agents of restoring peace during and/or after the genocide through resistance to the genocide, reparation, (un)forgiveness and reconciliation and what the outcomes of all this are; and 2) whether there are any lessons to learn from the families and communities’ actions, including those of the first and second generation, in the peacebuilding process.

His PhD project is self-funded research based on articles. The Balzan fellowship will enable him to do data collection, and to liaise with ANU’s academicians interested in collaborating with CBS Rwanda focusing on the variety of consequences of the genocide as well as processes of recovery and related challenges in these processes that academicians and practitioners can learn from.