Happy International Women’s Month!

As we celebrate International Women’s Month for 2022, I wish to acknowledge and pay tribute to all women and girls who have carried the torch of gender equality and women’s empowerment while leading the change for a more sustainable and climate-resilient future for all, leaving no one behind. Let me also acknowledge boys and men who have been engaged in transforming our society! All the recognized or not HeForShes! Indeed, Gender equality and gender parity are not only a fundamental human right; but also, indispensable requirements in building a fairer, more inclusive, peaceful, safer, more resilient, and greener society. This requires a societal approach tackling all inequalities and the issue of power imbalance in leadership, management, access to resources and opportunities. The world is facing many challenges: COVID-19 pandemic, other diseases, climate crisis, conflicts and wars, quality of growth and inequalities. All have something in common: they all disproportionately negatively affect women and girls.

 In such a context, this year’s theme “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow” is aligned with the priority theme for the 66th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66): “Achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies, and programs”.  The CSW, as a key intergovernmental forum for gender equality, is instrumental in promoting women’s rights, documenting the reality of women’s lives throughout the world, and shaping global standards on gender equality and the empowerment of women. It provides us with the opportunity to take stock of progress achieved and what is lagging in the implementation of commitments on gender equality and women´s rights.

 Gender equality plays a catalytic role not just to transforming the lives of women and girls, but in accelerating progress toward the three dimensions of sustainable development- which are social, economic, and environmental. A robust set of internationally agreed norms and standards, such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Maputo Protocol – “Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa”-, guarantee comprehensive rights to women and girls and recognize that peace and development are inextricably linked with gender equality. Ensuring women’s and girls’ leadership and participation is vital if global efforts to tackle global challenges are to succeed.

 In Rwanda, 79 percent of women are employed in agriculture and majority of them in subsistence agriculture. Figures clearly highlight the enormous contribution of women as key producers for both their families, market and the country in general.

Women continue to increasingly become more vulnerable to climate stressors like temperature increase, floods and more frequent droughts affecting crop yields as well as hunger, nutrition, and loss of lives, than men, as they constitute the majority of the world’s poor (in Rwanda, 39.5% of female headed households are poor vs. 37.8% of male headed households) and are more dependent on the natural resources which climate change threatens the most. The issues of climate change and sustainability have had and will continue to have, severe and lasting impacts on our environment, economic and social development.

The data provided by the National Institute of Statistics (NISR), Family Census (EICV3,4,5) indicate that the number of households using firewood for cooking has decreased from 85.3%% in 2010 to 78.2% in 2017 for men headed households while the number of women headed households slightly decreased from 88.5% to 84.7% for the same period. This calls for more effort to reduce this number further to avoid the negative effects of environmental damage but also diminishing the burden on women to fetching firewood for cooking as an activity culturally attributed to them and children in addition to other household chores.

The Government of Rwanda has demonstrated political will and commitment in mainstreaming gender equality and women’s empowerment in all the development frameworks, including in the National Strategy for Transformation (NST1 2017-2024), both at central and local levels including developing climate-resilient settlements for families living in northern Rwandan areas prone to climate impact by supporting community-based adaptation planning and livelihoods diversification. The Government has also undertaken several measures to address climate change, ratifying the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992, developing a National Adaptation Action Plan (NAPA) in 2000, and adopting a green growth and climate resilience strategy (GGCRS) in 2011. Rwanda has been the first African country to submit its revised Nationally Determined Contributions regarding the Paris Agreement on Climate. The country continues to register significant gains not only in women’s representation in leadership positions, but also leading on the numbers of signatories to the HeForShe campaign with over 200,000 men signing up as champions for gender equality. Last week, 9 companies have been awarded in the Gender Equality Seal and the private sector. Gender equality and women empowerment are also good for the business!