National stakeholders in the fight against gender related violence have called for stringent measures to curb the increasing crime cases in the country.

The stakeholders that included government and private institutions were on Wednesday attending a workshop organised by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) at Hotel Novotel Umubano.

They called for careful and tactical means of collecting information from torture victims arguing that unless this is done, many cases of violence would continue to go unnoticed.

"There is need to know the right methods investigators should use to collect information from sexually harassed people. If this is ignored one may end up getting wrong details of what actually happened,” said Francois Kambogo from the National Institute of Statistics.

Captain Aimable Mushabe from the Ministry of Defence said that timely legal pursuit of sexual violence cases is sometimes hampered by victims reporting the cases late.
He added that late reporting doesn’t only kill evidence but also leads to the victim suffering from complicated psychological effects.

The participants also cited economic violence in Kayonza District, Eastern Province, adding that arises from greed for land by family members.

Meanwhile, through the National University of Rwanda (NUR)’s department of applied statistics, Unifem will soon start collecting gender disaggregated data on sexual and gender-based violence from the districts of Ngororero, Rutsiro and Kayonza, and Kigali City.

According to Maxime Rwendeye, Unifem’s Program Coordinator in charge of sexual and gender-based violence, suggestions for practical solutions from stakeholders will offer a more realistic approach for NUR to effectively collect the right information.

"This will give us a larger view of what actually takes place on the ground because all these stakeholders handle these cases,” he said.

The workshop was attended by among others institutions representatives from the Justice and Defence ministries, Haguruka (a women pressure group) and ARCT Ruhuka, (a trauma and counselling centre).
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