KIGALI, RWANDA – For many, Rwanda is synonymous with violence and violence against women. But since the genocide of 1994, where more than 500,000 women were raped, Rwanda has taken what many advocates are calling impressive strides to lead the campaign against gender-based violence on the continent of Africa.
Mukawera Annah, 28, was brutally beaten by her husband for years until she ended up in the hospital. Angela Mukankusi, 15, was sexually abused by her boss at work. For years, women like them have had no resources to seek help and justice. So they kept silent.
But last year, the Rwanda Police Force created the ISANGE One Stop Center, a facility that houses both physical and mental health services and a police desk. Women who come here can receive medical care, support and report crimes in a safe place.
“It has been a great support in my life,” says Annah. “I was beaten by my husband to the level of going to hospital. The agent from ISANGE helped me from a physical and judicial aspect,” she says.
Before ISANGE, which means, “feel welcome and free” in Kinyarwanda, opened its doors last year, there was no place in Rwanda for patients to go when they experienced sexual violence. While the “one stop” model has been applied in the United States and Europe, it has not yet taken hold in other parts of the world. But in the last 11 months since the center opened, more than 2,000 women have received treatment and reported their crimes. Many say the frequent and successful awareness campaigns hosted by ISANGE are also responsible for the steep drop, 26 percent, in reported rapes here.
This year’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence will wrap up this Friday, after events and awareness campaigns have taken place in more than 50 countries. In Rwanda, the 16 Days were celebrated this year, as Rwanda has become a leader in the fight against gender violence on a continent where the problem still exists in epic proportions. In Tanzania, 50 per cent of women report being routinely beaten by a partner or husband. In Ethiopia, the number is 71 percent. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda’s much-larger neighbors to the west, as many as 1,100 rapes are reported each month; an average of 36 women and girls raped every day. And in South Africa, Amnesty International reports that one woman is killed by her husband every six hours. But here, the ISANGE center, a global conference and continued awareness campaigns are forcing the statistics down.
This month marks the end of “Oya to Gender Based Violence” in Rwanda. (Oya means no in Kinyarwanda.)The campaign, sponsored by ISANGE, featured public awareness messages encouraging women and girls to gain the confidence to break their silence and speak out after domestic abuse. The focus on speaking out also deters the crime, says Belline Mukamana, the police inspector who heads the Gender Desk in the Rwanda Police force in Kigali, the capital city.
Mukamana says that 95 percent of the patients who seek help at ISANGE are women, but they offer assistance to boys and men who experience domestic and sexual violence too. Since First Lady Jeanette Kagame cut the ribbon in front of the center last year, five percent of the center’s visitors have been men, and strikingly, 56 percent of all visitors were under the age of 15.
“The Rwanda national police created this to combat gender based violence, domestic and child abuse,” says Mukamana. After a pause, she retracts, “It is not only to combat or to decrease, but to end gender based violence.”
Mukamana says that since the center opened, gender based violence crimes have been decreasing in all stations nationwide. “This is a clear indication of our efforts to bring an end to violence against women and girls in Rwanda,” she says. Officers at ISANGE and all police gender desks are professionally trained to receive and handle victims of violence. “[We] treat them with respect and without prejudice which makes them feel secure and re-assured,” she says.
In addition to victims in Rwanda, ISANGE has welcomed women from Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Burundi and Sudan. Teams from the United Nations, including UNDP, UNIFEM, UNFPA, UNICEF, have also toured the center.
Mukamana says she is pleased to see Rwanda leading the effort to meet the Millennium Development Goals to end violence against women. She says Rwanda will continue to participate in the Global Campaign UNiTE to End Violence against Women, which calls upon governments, civil society, women’s organizations, the private sector, media, and the entire UN system to join forces to end violence against women and the girl child.
“Though we will show the world our achievements, we will also [continue] to get additional ideas to deal with this crime in our country,” Mukamana says.
