Government acts against gender violence

Rwanda has launched an 18-month programme to combat gender and sexual violence, the minister of gender and women's development, Angeline Muganza, said on Thursday from the capital, Kigali.

The US $627,379 USAID-funded project, launched on Tuesday, has four components. One of these is to conduct a survey in August for women of reproductive age covering the period before and after the genocide of 1994. The results would assist in understanding how women in this category had experienced sexual violence during the specified periods, the similarities and differences in terms of who was affected, who perpetrated the offences, where, when, and why, USAID-Rwanda reported on Thursday.

Another component will the training of service providers involved in dealing with issues of gender and sexual violence. Health officials, police and Gacaca (traditional court) judges will also be trained to help women and girls who suffered during the genocide. NGOs have been identified to implement the programme. The development of sensitisation and training material began on Tuesday.

"There will also be a media campaign, involving radio and television, to create awareness of the magnitude and negative impact of gender-based violence in society," Muganza said.

The government effort would involve civil society, NGOs and the international community. An indication of the government's commitment in this issue was the fact that the justice ministry was already taking action on cases of violence and sexual abuse, the state-run ARI news agency reported on Wednesday.

It said statistics showed that for every 1,000 children raped, the courts were processing at least 600 cases. The perpetrators involved in 300 of these had already been found guilty, while the guilt of those accused in another 200 was being presumed.
In her address at the launch of the 18-month programme, Muganza said, "although the exact number of survivors of sexual and gender violence committed between 1990 and 1994 is not known, it is thought that 250,000 women were raped and that 30,000 pregnancies occurred from rape."

She said that a 1999 study by Avega-Aghozo on Violence Against Women in Rwanda showed that 80.9 percent of survivors showed symptoms of trauma, 69 percent are HIV positive, 13 percent had broken vertebrae, 12 percent lost leg usage and 7.9 percent had their legs amputated. The study focused, she said, on physical and psychological torture, and sexual violence during the genocide.