Sustainable unity starts from families, Prime Minister Edouard Ngirente has said, calling on Rwandans to strive for wealthy and healthy families.

The Premier made the remarks on Saturday as he launched this year’s Unity and Reconciliation month in Nyagatare District’s Rukomo Sector during the Community service Umuganda, whereby he joined residents of Nyagatare to level a plot, and laid a foundation stone for the construction of 12 class rooms at GroupeScolaireRukomo.

The month will run under the theme: "Strive for unity and reconciliation in the family

According to Xaverine Uwimana, the Unity and Reconciliation Commission (NURC) vice-president, various activities such as offering socio-economic support to the vulnerable, especially genocide survivors, visiting prisons to encourage genocide convicts to tell the truth about their cases, and consider effective reintegration of prisoners in line with fostering unity and reconciliation.

"The real unity starts from the family, and the Rwandan family is the foundation of our country. When families are wealthy and healthy, our country is also in a good state,” she said. .

Ethnic divisionism, she said, was inculcated among Rwandans for a long time, which needs proper approaches such as "NdiUmunyarwanda” – an initiative intended to promote the Rwandan spirit and heroic values to get rid of such a destructive ideology.

The 2015 Rwanda Reconciliation Barometer’s findings showed that on average reconciliation among Rwandans was at 92.5 per cent in 2015 from 82.3 per cent in 2010.

However, it also revealed challenges that may hamper reconciliation process, such as ethnic-based stereotypes, as expressed by 27.9 per cent of citizens; persistence of genocide ideology, as voiced by 25.8 per cent of citizens, and the wounds resulting from the divisive past and the genocide not yet fully healed, as reported by 4.6 per cent of citizens.

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