These are the faces of women
who have come to represent progress.
Rwanda has led the world
in the levels of women in its parliament,
now for over a decade.
Nearly two thirds of Rwanda's parliament
is made up of women.
That's more than twice the global average.
Countries that have more women in power
tend to have a better outcomes for development.
So, better outcomes for child mortality,
better outcomes for education.
Countries that have higher levels of women
in their government and also just general
better levels of gender equality, more broadly
are more likely to be stable and secure.
But the origins of Rwanda's high female representation
stem from the country's darkest moment.
Women must know that things have changed.
We can do, we can equally do what men can do.
The whole world now wants to learn from Rwanda
about gender, about women in Rwanda.
How are they developing?
What are they achieving?
While Rwanda leads the world in female representation,
the motivations of the ruling party have raised questions
about the true extent of women's power.
In April 1994, Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana
was killed when his plane was shot down
near the country's capital, Kigali.
The assassination ignited ethnic tensions
between the majority, Hutu and the minority, Tutsi tribes.
In 100 days of hatred, 800,000 died.
The violence would leave a 10th of the population dead.
While the conflict was undoubtedly framed by ethnicity,
its effect on women was undeniable.
The genocide was planned,
not just killing but other things,
rape was a reward the leaders gave to those who killed.
Most women had been gang raped.
That was very traumatic.
Some of them are mutilated.
Some of them have had children
born out of the rape.
Women were targeted because of who they were.
And it shocked the world to see that even your own husband,
whom you have given beautiful children
comes around and slaughters you
because you belong to that ethnic group.
Many others were, you know, disconnected
and kind of separated from their children,
from their families.
In spite of this horror,
it was women who would rebuild the country.
It is now among the most stable countries in Africa,
average incomes have tripled.
Educational, Healthcare, Tourism
and Trade are all improving dramatically.
Rwandan leader Paul Kagame
has been assailed by international observers
for suppressing political opponents and dissent,
sometimes violently.
But he and his ruling party, the RPF,
have also been praised for stabilizing the country
and setting it on a course of recovery.
Part of this redevelopment was enabling Rwandan women,
who had found themselves taking on new roles
that had traditionally belonged to men.
Burying the dead, building homes,
as well as housing half a million orphans.
I'm always thinking of stories
that women have told me over the years
about how before the genocide, they were a housewife
and they were living sort of,
you know, kind of day to day, raising children,
cooking, caring for their plot of land
and how in the aftermath of the violence,
they found themselves alone
and completely realizing that they needed to act,
they needed to pull people together.
They needed to do something to be able to survive
the utterly abysmal and horrible conditions of life.
Especially in rural communities
in the aftermath of the bloodshed.
Land has gone fallow, massive displacement.
I mean, about 50% of the population
was displaced from their homes.
And so you see a total of erosion of social networks.
You know, you no longer have your community to be with.
You have to forge new networks
and forge new, you know,
ways of providing for yourself
and for your children and for others in your community.
Just a few years after the violence,
women had formed an estimated 15,400
organizations across the country.
Initially, with a focus on grief, trauma and support.
Mary Balikungeri founded the Rwanda Women's Network.
In our safe space you could meet and cry,
talk about our challenges,
talk about issues that really concerned us.
But at the same time, ask ourselves, what should we do?
So out of that safe space,
women have learnt to plan, to organize,
to take awareness to their fellow women
and eventually to connect to the whole thinking
to the whole political thinking of the country.
And in that journey of safety has given us the power
to know that you can change a society.
Some of these organizations
would evolve into vocational training
and profit-making businesses.
By joining together and formalizing their structure,
groups could become eligible for economic benefits
from NGOs or the government.
In the process of formalizing,
they established a president, a vice president,
a secretary, a treasurer
and this provided really a kind of a platform
for women's leadership within these really nascent,
small, community organizations, that then women could use
to kind of support their
increased engagement in politics.
This increasing engagement of women
in what had been a typical patriarchy,
would have a broader social impact.
From the clothes they wore,
to the businesses they started to run,
ideas of what women should be were about to change.
When you look back before the colonial era,
definitely women were, you know, were very active,
active but yet invisible
and that's the typical patriarchal society
that most African countries are.
Patriarchy is a very hard system to undo.
It takes courage, it takes time,
because it is culturally grounded.
To begin undoing the system
there was one aspect of Rwandan society
that needed to change quickly: land rights.
With more than 90% of Rwandans
dependent on agriculture for their livelihood,
access was vital in the recovery.
Women's organizations mobilized to take control of land
owned by deceased family members.
In 1999, the Succession Law was passed,
granting women the right to inherit land and property
for the first time.
This would set the stage for subsequent legislation
that established children's rights
and protection against gender-based violence.
At the time they inheritance laws were not there,
and so we had to fight for it in order to make sure
that women are able to inherit their husband's properties.
We want to be able to forcefully
put forward the women's needs,
because women's needs are not men's needs
and nobody will talk about women's needs
better than you as a woman.
With just 20 judges left alive after the genocide,
more women also became involved in Gacaca courts,
village-based justice proceedings
designed to try hundreds of thousands
accused of crimes during the genocide.
By 2001, about 35% of newly-elected
Gacaca judges were women.
Then in August, 2003, a new constitution was written,
as well as committing to fight the ideology of genocide
and eradicate ethnic divisions,
the constitution also pursues gender equality.
It states that women are granted at least 30% of posts
in decision making organs.
Research shows that 30% is the critical mass
of women in power needed
to make a substantial difference in politics.
In Rwanda, those seats are elected by voters
from local women's councils,
but women are also able to contest seats
outside of this allocation.
In the first election after the genocide,
women won 48% of seats.
This really was, I think, evidence
of a broader swell of support,
both kind of from the political leadership
as well as from the grassroots,
for women's political participation
in this sort of new rebuilding Rwanda.
Those sorts of informal, grassroots, self-help projects
became the foundation for building
a more engaged kind of political,
kind of population of women.
The narrative has changed,
before it was only a male-dominated space,
but now we are together in it.
So the more we continue to engage ourselves with them
and the more we continue to reason them,
and that's why we said the narrative is changing,
and it has changed for good.
By the next election, in 2013,
the number of women elected rose to 64%.
Led by Paul Kagame, the ruling party,
the Rwandan Patriotic Front
has made women's inclusion a hallmark of its program
for post-genocide recovery and reconstruction.
But despite the significant steps in female empowerment
and broader development following the genocide,
human rights advocates are highly critical
of the way in which Kagame's party runs the country.
Freedom House ranks Rwanda as not free,
with concern about rights and liberties.
Human Rights Watch says the government
displays a marked intolerance
of the most basic forms of dissent.
Amnesty's International Rights Reports
in the lead up to the 2017 election
that talks about opposition politicians,
journalists, human rights defenders being jailed,
physically attacked, even killed.
I think it's rubbish, absolute rubbish.
You reject that?
Rwanda is completely different
from what it was 25 years ago.
And although the RPF welcomed women into politics,
critics suggest the motives aren't as noble as once thought.
Women who were seen as less complicit in the genocide
could be used to the party's advantage.
Many of the boldest and most kind of fierce leaders
within civil society were brought into government,
so that they could be, I think, greater
kind of policed in a way that is really,
has been detrimental for the kind of growth
of democracy in Rwanda.
I think the notable thing about the women seats,
is that they are not affiliated with a political party,
so they are just women's seats.
And so critics have really suggested
that this has allowed Rwandan Patriotic Front
to cement an even greater political control
over the parliament.
Because while the number of seats held by RPF members
is whatever it is, the number of seats that are held by RPF
kind of supporters
and, you know, those closely affiliated with the party
are often on the women's tickets
and so they're not actually,
they're not actually recorded
as being a member of a political party
while they're in office.
When we look at the cases of Diane Rwigara
or Victoire Ingabire, these are two women
that have dared to challenge
President Kagame for the presidency,
and both were met with extreme sanctions.
They were thrown in jail.
I think those cases are really illustrative
in showing the limits
of the story of women's empowerment in Rwanda.
We do see these kind of amazing levels
of women in government, but at the same time,
what, you know, what power does a parliament have
if they are completely under the control of the Executive?
Women have power to the extent
that what they're interested in and working on
does not conflict with the goals of the regime.
So there have been some kind of notable,
I think, pieces of legislation,
especially around gender-based violence
that women parliamentarians in Rwanda have pushed forward
and which have made important,
impressive sort of legislative change in the country.
Despite this legislation,
levels of violence against women remain high.
Estimates in 2010, found 41% of women have experienced
some form of physical violence since the age of 15,
rising to 56% for married women.
We see really the challenge
in assuming that women's political empowerment
translates or trickles down
to women's empowerment, writ large, right?
We see remarkably high rates of gender-based violence,
of intimate partner violence.
We see remarkably high rates
of women's economic disenfranchisement.
The story on Rwanda tends to be quite polarized.
Just 25 years after absolutely catastrophic
and horrific violence,
you see a country that hasn't seen a return to bloodshed.
You see a country where there have been
profound increases in longevity, in Health,
in Education, you know, and that story is one
that really should be celebrated and commended.
And then on the other hand,
this authoritarian state that has completely
jeopardized its population's wellbeing
by shutting down dissent,
by conducting widespread extra judicial killings.
These two stories are mutually compatible.
They are both true.
And I think the, you know, the reality is that
Rwanda's developmental progress has been made possible
by its authoritarian nature, right?
Rwanda's success, in terms of not having another
outbreak of violence has been possible
because of its massively robust
military and security apparatus.
Some of the gains women have made
are undermined by the authoritarian nature of the state.
Disproportionate numbers of wealthy,
foreign-born Tutsi women sit at the top of the table.
Which means new forms of inequality
are developing in Rwanda,
impacting the incredible progress women made
in the immediate aftermath of the violence.
Rwanda leads the world
when it comes to the number of women in power,
but it's only one part of the bigger picture of equality.
For me, the real lesson of Rwanda is that,
getting women into politics is only one of many
things we must do to actually,
you know, increase women's power and more importantly,
dismantle forms of oppression against women.
If the level of women in government
is not matched by a corresponding,
kind of strong women's movement rooted in civil society,
then the women in government
are almost always going to be tokenized.
That sort of corresponding need for women in government
and kind of the restructuring of the economy
of kind of the kind of patriarchal roots
of the family and of society and of changing kind of
the systems of governance as well,
that's the way that we build
a more gender equal future.
This process we are going through as a country,
I call it a rebirth.
I must say that Rwanda,
when you compare it to other African countries,
we are definitely fortunate because we have a system,
a system that responds to the needs of women.
So we keep reminding ourselves
that we worked for it and we deserve it.
We are now saying we need to raise
our sons and daughters differently.
We've come to understand
because we have enjoyed the new opportunities
that the new Rwanda offers,
and doing what is undoable, it's tough.
Let's continue but at the same time,
make sure that the generation to come
sees things differently.