National Gender Policy Final Version.

The National Gender Policy highlights principal guidelines on which sectoral policies and programmes will base to integrate gender issues in their respective social, cultural, economic and political planning and programming. The approach used in the elaboration of this policy consisted of interviews with representatives of institutions (public institutions, private sector, civil society, various development partners, NGOs, donors, decentralised government authorities, religious organisations, and men engaged network) involved in the gender equality process.
The vision of the National Gender Policy is to set the Rwandan society free from all forms of gender based discrimination and see both men and women participate fully and enjoy equitably from the development processes.
The main mission of this policy is to contribute to the elimination of gender inequalities in all sectors of national life, in order to achieve the nation’s goal for sustainable development.
The overall goal of the National Gender Policy is to promote gender equality and equity in Rwanda through a clearly defined process for mainstreaming gender needs and concerns across all sectors of development. The Policy defines the institutional framework and mechanisms within which gender equality and equity policies and programmes will be designed, implemented, monitored and evaluated, and coordinated. It will thus guide the integration of a gender perspective into all sectors and institutions.
In order to eliminate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition, the government plans to implement the following strategies: (i) enhance women’s and men’s agricultural productivity for food security, (ii) ensure women and men’s capacity to preserve and store food surplus is enhanced for future, (iii) to ensure that women and men have the necessary facilities for efficient food distribution, (iv) to facilitate access to safe and clean water for households in both rural and urban areas to reduce the burden of obtaining household water on women, (v) facilitate access to health facilities for both women and men and ensure that trained medical personnel and appropriate equipment and medical supplies are in place and available.
Regarding the reduction of the rural poverty, the government envisages the following strategies: (i) to facilitate and support the enhancement of rural women’s entrepreneurial skills, (ii) to ensure that rural women’s products’ are given greater value through quality improvement of their products and skills development, (iii) establish a catch up program for women who have not yet completed their secondary school, (iv) to ensure that awareness on women’s rights as human rights is sufficiently raised and implemented, (v) to reduce significantly the number of women in care economy through training and value addition for their products. Trained women can invest in income generating activities through facilitated access to credits and other production means, (vi) to ensure that the reproductive health services delivery system is gender sensitive and easily accessibility to both men and women, (vii) to facilitate and support establishment of appropriate gender sensitive mechanisms for the improvement of quality education, (viii) to promote private and public sector partnership aimed at creating markets for women’s products in different sectors.
To enable inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems, a number of key strategies will be implemented by the policy in order to enhance the supply-chain transformation for local and export markets including: (i) to ensure women and men have adequate market information, (ii) to enhance women’s and men’s access to markets through improved transport and communication facilities, (iii) to enhance women’s and men’s level of competitiveness with regard to value addition and standardization, (iv) to ensure that women and men agriculturalists are guaranteed minimum security for their produce, (v) to train and involve women in the hide tanning industry and ensure that wet hides produced by women are of export standards and find markets.
To increase the resilience of livelihoods to disasters, the policy plans the following activities: (i) to facilitate and support women’s and men’s participation in environmental protection and management, (ii) to facilitate and support land use planning and management processes for improved and sustainable land use, (iii) to increase number of women trained and involved in environmental impact assessment, (iv) to ensure that an effective gender sensitive strategy is developed for preparedness in a range of disaster scenarios, e.g. floods, volcanic eruption, drought, mass influx of refugees/returnees/displaced persons.
In the context of governance, this policy will be implemented by relevant stakeholders. A strategic plan has been elaborated to highlight key strategic actions which will guide institutional plan actions.