Together! On the road to achieve gender equality

Today Rwanda stands out both in Africa and around the world for its efforts to achieve gender equality. As a key partner of the Government of Rwanda and the lead UN entity on gender equality, UN Women Rwanda shares its journey and contributions to the progress in Rwanda, which has involved strategic interventions to address both the key drivers of women’s vulnerability and gender inequality.

The documentation builds on a previous UN Women publication “Towards Gender Equality in Rwanda” (2012-2016) and captures the progress made from 2017 to 2021 across the different focus areas: Leadership and Political Participation, Women’s Economic Empowerment and Ending Violence Against Women. It also touches on cross-cutting issues such as Data and Statistics, HIV/AIDS and the response to the unfolding crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over the last five years, UN Women has been striving to amplify women’s voices and choices by addressing structural and socio-economic barriers to gender equality in Rwanda. Our thrust has been addressing negative social norms and fostering attitude and behavioral change; increasing women’s participation in leadership positions especially at the local level and in the private sector, strengthening women’s economic autonomy, enhancing GEWE accountability and frameworks; and prevention and response to address GBV.

This report highlights some of our achievements, good practices and the lessons that we learned along the way, together with our national partners, development partners, colleagues from the One UN family and the many women, men, boys and girls that we are so privileged to serve.