Women Lead Way to Rwanda's Future
By Elizabeth Powley

November 21, 2002 - (International Herald Tribune) If the despair and the potential of Africa could both be represented in one person, it would be Justine Uvuza. Like too many Rwandan women, Justine, not yet 30, has suffered the worst that her continent has to offer: She lost family in Rwanda's genocide and has watched friends succumb to AIDS.

Justine is supporting an extended household of relatives too traumatized to care for themselves. But she is also a symbol of hope. She put herself through school, is working on a master's degree, and through her work at the Ministry of Gender is helping women contribute to an inclusive, democratic Rwanda. In bringing Hutu and Tutsi women together to confront their common legal and economic problems, she helps them to see that poverty and illiteracy don't break down along ethnic lines.

In the 1994 genocide, 10 percent of the Rwandan population was slaughtered. Among the nearly 800,000 killed, men were the majority of both perpetrators and victims. In the immediate aftermath of the genocide, 70 percent of the population was female.

Rwandans say that women bore the brunt of the genocide - they lost husbands and children, survived rape and torture - and yet they were the ones who picked up the pieces of a literally decimated society. They formed organizations to help widows and survivors. They took in half a million orphans. They assumed nontraditional social and economic roles, such as brick-making and house-building, and led their communities toward recovery. Rwandans have recognized the vital role women are playing, not only in the physical reconstruction but also in the crucial task of social healing and reconciliation; they have determined that women should be brought into the political life of the country as well. As part of its efforts at post-conflict democratization, the Rwandan government has created structures that encourage the political participation of women, who were previously excluded from governmental decision-making processes.

The most innovative of these structures seems truly radical to Western eyes: women-only elections. Women in a given community elect a women's council that operates parallel to the general local council.

The women's councils ensure that women's views on education, health, security, and other issues are articulated to local authorities. Furthermore, the head of the women's council holds a reserved seat on the general local council, thereby ensuring official representation of women's concerns.

These parallel structures exist at the local, provincial, and national levels. Thus, two women serving in Rwanda's national Parliament were elected by only the women of the country.
While Westerners tie themselves in knots over issues like affirmative action and quotas, the Rwandan government has quietly set up a system to compensate for women's historic exclusion and to tap their potential. Aloisea Inyumba, governor of one of Rwanda's provinces, explains that this is common sense, "If you have a child who has been malnourished, you can't compare her to your other children. You have to give her a special feeding."

The "special feeding" seems to be working. In the 1999 elections for general local councils, women won only 13.7 percent of seats. Three years later, having gained experience and confidence in the women-only system, they won 27 percent of seats. In the parliamentary context, women representatives have made groundbreaking contributions such as revoking laws that denied women the right to inherit land.

Rwanda's efforts at democratization, like those of other African nations, are of even greater import in light of the African-led New Partnership for Africa's Development, or NEPAD, that the Group of Eight industrialized countries has committed to support. In July, the G-8 pledged to strengthen governance in Africa and to support the equal participation of women in all aspects of the NEPAD process. Democracy in Rwanda faces many challenges. Yet, on the question of women, Rwanda has taken a bold and progressive step. It is an indigenous solution, not one imposed by the international community; it reveals a commitment to include new voices, to take democracy to the people. If the G-8 governments are committed to putting money where their rhetoric is, then Rwanda's women must be supported. Justine shouldn't be extraordinary, she should be the norm.

Elizabeth Powley is Associate Director of the Women Waging Peace Policy Commission.