Indashyikirwa — Rwanda's Couples-Curriculum Programme to Prevent Intimate-Partner Violence

Indashyikirwa ('Agents of Change' in Kinyarwanda) is a gender-based-violence prevention programme run jointly by CARE International Rwanda, the Rwanda Women's Network and the Rwanda Men's Resource Centre (RWAMREC), adapted from Uganda's SASA! community-mobilisation approach.

To prevent intimate-partner violence by building equitable, non-violent relationships among heterosexual couples, supported by community-activist outreach, engagement of local opinion leaders, and women's safe spaces.

Its core is a 21-session curriculum for heterosexual couples, paired with community-activist outreach and women's 'safe spaces' for support and referral. Between 2015 and 2018, the programme was tested in a cluster-randomised controlled trial across 28 sectors in seven districts of Eastern, Northern and Western Rwanda (14 intervention, 14 control).

At 24 months, women in intervention sectors were significantly less likely to report physical and/or sexual intimate-partner violence than women in control sectors (adjusted risk ratio 0.44, 95% CI 0.34-0.59), and men in intervention sectors reported significantly less perpetration (adjusted risk ratio 0.54, 95% CI 0.38-0.75), based on over 3,300 endline participants.

This is one of relatively few IPV-prevention interventions worldwide evaluated with a cluster-RCT design of this scale, giving it stronger causal evidence than the descriptive or quasi-experimental evidence typical in this field, though its evidence base remains specific to rural Rwanda and replication elsewhere is still limited.