Women and Political Development in Africa

Thanks to the Chief for this one:

Rwandan women offer a blueprint

The genocide in Rwanda literally left the women behind to pick up the pieces. After the violence subsided in 1994, 70 percent of the remaining population of Rwanda was women. If communities were going to survive, and if the country was ever going to recover, it was up to them to make it happen. They forced themselves to face the inconceivable and they rebuilt. It was women who cleared the dead bodies from the streets; women who rebuilt the homes and women who solved the national orphan crisis—more than 500,000 children with nowhere to go. Nearly every woman took at least one child into her home.

The government of Rwanda was quick to acknowledge the significance of women in the rebuilding process. In 1996, President Paul Kagame mandated that 30 percent of the parliamentary seats be designated for women. Kagame stressed that he saw them as key agents in the country’s reconstruction, and argued that the government must train, support and mobilize them. As we see from today’s revived Rwanda, he was right on target.

Rwandan women represent 49.8 percent of the country’s lower house of parliament, a larger percentage than any other country in the world. Women also occupy nearly 50 percent of the positions in Rwanda’s ministries from the village to the province to the national government level.

The two issues that come to mind: the recent election of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia, and Kaplan’s lengthy description of the role of women in post-war Eritrea and their role in stabilizing the country.

The question is: How can we apply the lessons of Rwanda’s recovery to other war-torn countries like Afghanistan and Iraq? Despite historical discrimination against women in Afghanistan and insecurity in Iraq, we, at Women for Women International, have been working hard at the grassroots level to embolden women to move from victim to survivor to active citizen, but we can’t do it alone and the time is now. We can’t wait for the bombs and bullets to stop to acknowledge the importance of women in their countries’ future.

That’s another thing that Kaplan said about women: educate and empower women and the culture will grow, because in the vast majority of societies, women raise the children and hold families together. If Rwanda’s experience can be applied to Lebanon, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, Nepal, Turkmenistan, or anywhere: empowering women stabilizes society.