In 2020, the world, including Rwanda, is gearing up to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fourth World Conference on Women and the Adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

This milestone will be simultaneously marked with the five years of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDGs) which aims as one to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

As we celebrate 25 years of Beijing Conference on women, a lot has been achieved in empowering women and girls.

However, we still have a long way to go by addressing persisting obstacles hindering women to fully enjoy their rights which include child defilement, Gender-Based Violence, unpaid care work, limited participation of women in leadership and governance processes among others. 

The Government of Rwanda, CSOs and Private sector should be committed to making gender equality a lived reality for all women and girls who have historically been marginalized and who have waited long enough.

This is a vision of a more prosperous, peaceful and fair world that is ultimately better for both women and men alike.

Gender equality is achieved when women and men enjoy the same rights and opportunities across all sectors of society, including economic participation and decision-making, and when the different behaviors, aspirations and needs of women and men are equally valued.

Providing women and girls with equal access to education, productive resources, health care, decent work, and representation in political and economic decision-making processes will fuel sustainable economies and benefit societies and humanity at large.

Implementing legal frameworks regarding female equality in the workplace and the eradication of harmful practices targeted at women and girls is crucial to ending the gender-based discrimination across areas and programs.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women emphasizes that "a change in the traditional role of men as well as the role of women in society and in the family is needed to achieve full equality of men and women.

It is also important to challenge the gender stereotypes that prevent men from contributing to unpaid care work so that women can also find time to engage in public spaces.

Over the last three decades, women empowerment has been at the heart of the debate on how to achieve gender equality between men and women across the world. Women empowerment is considered as key condition for the success of development programs and endeavours.

In the same vein, in 1995, at the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women, in which Rwanda took part, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) has been adopted as a comprehensive agenda for women empowerment and gender equality.

It provides for collaboration between governments, private sector, development partners, International and civil society organizations and calls up them to take strategic actions to empower women around the following 12 critical areas of concern: