"Womens Voices Rise as Rwanda Reinvents Itself"
By Marc Lacey
New York Times, February 26, 2024

KIGALI, Rwanda, Feb. 23 - The most remarkable thing about Rwanda's Parliament is not the war-damaged building that houses it, with its bullet holes and huge artillery gashes still visible a decade after the end of the fighting.

It is inside the hilltop structure, from the spectator seats of the lower house, that one sees a most unusual sight for this part of the world: mixed in with all the dark-suited male legislators are many, many women - a greater percentage than in any other parliamentary body in the world.

A decade after a killing frenzy left this tiny Central Africa country in ruins, Rwanda is reinventing itself in some surprising ways.

Women make up 48.8 percent of seats in the lower house of Parliament, a higher percentage than in the legislative bodies in countries like Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway, known for their progressive policies.

The rise of women stems in part from government initiatives aimed at propelling them to the upper ranks of politics. But their numbers do not necessarily add up to influence.

They are more a reflection of the demographics and disillusionment spawned by the killing spree that left 800,000 or more people dead, though some lawmakers are trying to use their new place in government to enhance the lot of women in what remains a deeply patriarchal land.

"Before the genocide, women always figured their husbands would take care of them," said Aurea Kayiganwa, the coordinator of Avega, a national organization representing Rwanda's many war widows. "But the genocide changed all that. It forced women to get active, to take care of themselves. So many of the men were gone."

At the end of the ethnic warfare of the 1990's, women greatly outnumbered men - some estimate the ratio as 7 to 1 - a result of the wanton killing of so many men and the escape of so many others involved in the carnage. During the rebuilding of the country, then, women's anguished voices were difficult not to hear, and they became what was seen as a powerful and credible force for reconciliation.

"I used to see politics as something bad," said Athanasie Gahondogo, a member of Parliament and executive secretary of the Forum for Rwandan Women Parliamentarians. "It's what caused our problems and made me a refugee for so long. But now I want to have a seat at the table."

Women were a tiny percentage of those jailed for taking part in the strife between the Tutsi, who make up about 15 percent of the population, and the Hutu, who represent nearly all of the rest. One study put the portion of women involved at just 2.3 percent.

A minister of family and women's affairs in the old government, Pauline Nyiramasuhukon, is on trial on genocide charges at the International Criminal Tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, but the heinous charges attributed to her, including inciting others to rape Tutsi women, are considered by many here to be an aberration when it comes to women.

"There's a widespread perception in Rwanda that women are better at reconciliation and forgiveness," said Elizabeth Powley, who has studied Rwandan women's political rise for Women Waging Peace, an organization based in Cambridge, Mass. "Giving them such prominence is partly an effort at conflict prevention."

During the drafting of the country's new postwar Constitution, 30 percent of the seats in the two house of Parliament were designated for women. But an unexpected thing happened in October 2003 when voters went to the polls to elect a Parliament for the first time since the war. They chose even more women than many male politicians expected.

"Some men even complained that women were taking some of the 'men' seats," said Donnah Kamashazi, a representative in Rwanda for the United Nations Development Fund for Women.

Six of the 20 seats in the Senate are held by women, meeting the 30 percent set aside. But in the lower house, which has 80 seats, women won 39, 15 more than the number reserved for them. Taken together, women make up 45 percent of the two chambers, just below the 45.3 percent in Sweden's single-chamber Parliament.

The political representation of Rwandan women is not limited to the legislative arena. There is a female chief justice of the Supreme Court, several female cabinet members, a female head of the influential National Unity and Reconciliation Commission and a female deputy police chief, to name but a few of the prominent women in Rwanda's political world.

All that said, women continue to suffer profoundly in today's Rwanda. "I try to forget what happened in 1994," said one of the suffering ones, Cécille Mukampabuka, 64, whose leg was shattered and who lost much of her family back then. "I would go mad if I didn't try to forget. But I can't ever forget. It's not over yet for me. I'm still suffering."

Rwanda remains a male-dominated land, far more than the gendersensitive numbers would suggest.

Patriarchal traditions remain strong in the home, where experts say women continue to suffer from spousal abuse and where the notion that the man is the lord of the manor thrives. A female senator disclosed to colleagues recently that she still deferred to her husband during official functions in her home so as not to question his supremacy there.

And the uppermost reaches of government remain the preserves of men. In Rwanda, President Paul Kagame, the former rebel leader whose forces quelled the mass killing of Tutsi and moderate Hutu in 1994, holds a firm grip on power, and loyalty to him remains a prerequisite for political survival, no matter one's sex.

Criticism of any aspect of governing in Rwanda, including the country's promotion of women, is done at one's own risk.

Recently, when the head of a women's organization questioned the effectiveness of the country's female legislators in solving women's problems and likened them to flowers, which look good but do little else, she was condemned and threatened. Shortly afterward, she fled the country.

"It was bad research," complained Odette Nyiramirimo, an influential senator and former cabinet minister. "She was calling the women stupid. She used the word flower to describe them. I think she was wrong."

Ms. Nyiramirimo and other women in politics here acknowledge that Parliament does not play an overly confrontation role with the executive branch, an outgrowth, they say, of the divisive politics of the country's past. Only a handful of pieces of legislation have originated in Parliament in recent years, for instance, and little if anything that Mr. Kagame suggests is rejected, or even substantially altered, before adoption.

Women also agree that it has taken some time for the female legislators to get their feet wet in politics. During a recent afternoon of political debate, it was clear that the proceedings were being dominated by men.

But women are making inroads. Legislation passed in 1999, before the current influx of women, liberalized the rules restricting inheritance for women, which were a major force in keeping women poor. Penalties for child rapists have been toughened, an outgrowth of the brutal treatment that women and girls suffered in 1994.

"Men are watching us," Ms. Nyiramirimo said. "They wonder if we'll rise up to a higher level. We're learning fast, because we have to. We say to each other that we can't be as good as the men - we have to be better."

Ms. Nyiramirimo said the true test of women's success would be how much they changed the lives of rural women, those who do not tool around the capital in chauffeur-driven vehicles and do not spend their time debating the issues of the day.

"Women in leadership are doing the little they can, but the problems are as big as the sea," said Mrs. Kamashazi of the United Nations Development Fund for Women. "Sometimes you just say, 'Oh, my goodness.' "

Rwanda remains a desperately poor country, where social indicators like life expectancy, child mortality and literacy lag significantly behind most of the world. Much of the day-to-day toil falls squarely on the shoulders of the nation's war-weary women.

"I grew up in a rural area, and every morning before school I had to get up early and fetch water at the river," Ms. Nyiramirimo recalled. "It was so painful to balance it on your head. Every time I go to my village I see girls and women still doing it."

One initiative she hopes to push her colleagues to adopt is a program to import donkeys, which are common in other parts of Africa but rather rare here. They would be bred and then distributed to villages to help relieve the loads women must bear.

Talk of putting 1994 in the past is difficult for many women across Rwanda, who find themselves poor and alone, or who suffer from AIDS contracted during a violent rape then, or who are now raising many children who are not their own but who were orphaned in the killing spree.

One of them is Winfred Mukagirhana, 46, who was raped repeatedly in 1994 and like so many other Rwandan women is now dying of AIDS. She lost her husband and four of her five children in 1994. Her lone surviving boy, who was 12 back then, is now an emotionally disturbed young man who cannot get the brutal attacks that he witnessed out of his head.

"What can the government do for me?" she asked, saying she could not feel much satisfaction from the statistics on women's progress that have put Rwanda so high compared with other countries in the world. "My life is over. I'm almost dead."

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