STATEMENT OF RWANDA, October, 2015

At the institutional level, Rwanda’s security organs, in collaboration with other Government agencies, local communities and civil society, have launched initiatives to protect and respond to violence that targets women and girls. The one-stop centres, which are shelters run by the national police, offer, inter alia, a wide range of free services for victims of gender-based violence, as do gender desks nationwide — in police stations, army posts and offices of the national prosecution agency — which have been set up to offer gender- sensitive services to victims.

In the international arena, Rwanda is among the leading police-contributing countries for female police and correctional officers in United Nations peace-support and peacekeeping missions. These officers actively contribute to combating and raising awareness on violence against women in the communities they serve. Similarly, during the 2015 peacekeeping summit, Rwanda pledged, inter alia, to deploy an all-women police unit in the United Nations peacekeeping apparatus. Currently, we have 198 female officers; next week 33 more will be deployed to the Central African Republic.