President Paul Kagame has today condemned women’s ill-treatment in the past and declared zero tolerance to injustice, domestic violence and women trafficking.
While opening the national congress of RPF Inkotanyi’s women league on April 22nd at Kigali Convention Center in Kigali Capital, the head of state told thousands of women party members that RPF was established to bring about change in the country.
Before the advent of RPF-led government, the nation was crippled by ethnicity, injustice, disunity, regionalism, nepotism among others that sank the country into the Genocide against Tutsi which claimed more than one million victims’ lives.
“In order to bring about change, you have to begin with dealing with injustice,” said RPF chairman, President Kagame.
He added that women were marginalized throughout the country’s history where girls were considered inferior to boys.
For instance, boys and men had rights to land and political positions while their counterparts (girls and women) bartered their land rights for personal possessions taken to new home and condemned them to stay home for their entire life going about house chores.
The chairman of RPF Inkotanyi said that empowering women is not a favor but the responsibility for collective development.
“When you develop women, you will be automatically developing everyone else. When we talk about empowering women, we are talking about empowering family, not to pit women against men,” stressed the statesman.
Rwanda has fared well in empowering women globally. With nearly 64 per cent of female MPs in the lower house of parliament, Rwanda is ranked first in the world to have two thirds of female legislators in the parliament.
In addition, women currently account for 36.7% in the cabinet led by the RPF chairman while 43.4% are attending tertiary education, according to available figures compiled by KT Press in the previous story.
The RPF chairman’s address condemned the evils afflicting women including trafficking and domestic violence.
“We should not tolerate trafficking of women and girls as if they are livestock in a market; trafficking of girls is not the dignity that RPF fought for, we should not consider it a normal trend in the country,” said President Kagame.
The head of state also said that the community should give right advice to young women about marriage and not tolerate domestic violence as it is not part of Rwanda’s culture.
