Residents of Nyanza District have been called upon to take part in the fight against sexual and gender based violence and child abuse.
The call was made by the District Police Commander (DPC), Superintendent of Police (SP) Athanase Ruganintwari on March 20 during a radio talk-show on Salus Radio.
“Gender Based Violence is not only directed to women, there are times when even men fall victims of different types of GBV although women are the majority victims of this kind of violence,” said SP Ruganintwari.
He explained that the law penalizes both male and female suspected of perpetuating gender based violence.
“Police has been at the forefront in the fight against GBV and child abuse but the success of this campaign rests in the hands of the people,” he added.
He noted that the government has put in place various strategies to further combat the two crimes including the scale up of Isange One Stop Centre to all district hospitals across the country which is underway.
Isange started in July 2009 at Kacyiru Police Hospital (KPH) as a pilot project to provide free psycho-socio, medical and legal services to adult and child survivors of gender based violence and child abuse and has since been scaled up to 23 hospitals.
Isange supports vulnerable communities by giving them medical insurance, livestock and carry out crime prevention awareness programmes in schools and communities.
The DPC pointed out that most offenders are normally under the influence of drugs and urged residents that, “if you are to address this problem, you have to use the bottom-up approach by, first, addressing the problem of drug abuse.”
With regards to child abuse, the DPC reminded residents that everyone has an obligation to ensure they collectively protect the rights of children and report to police anyone who violate their rights.
“Fighting such crimes should be the responsibility of every citizen and not only left to Rwanda National Police and other related institutions.”
According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2015, Rwanda ranked sixth in closing gender gaps in the world.
Statistics from Rwanda National Police show that cases of gender based violence have declined.
Spousal assault cases also reduced from 861 in 2014 to 465 last year.
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