The governors of Southern and Northern provinces have described the status of Gender Based Violence (GBV) as ‘minor’ among the crimes committed in their areas.

Speaking to The New Times, Aime Bosenibamwe of the Northern Province said that measures to prevent GBV crimes before they are committed were in place, are active and producing results.

Among the measures, he said are training of community policing committees on how to fight the crime, registering of all families with wrangles and counseling them and building a strong security network in the area.

"We have a joint operation centre at all sectors, districts and at the provincial level which is effective, where all crimes are reported by all security agencies. These statistics help us to identify areas that need immediate response,” Bosenibamwe, whose province was ranked the least in GBV crimes, said.

He commended the national police for its commitment to fight the crime and said that "the measures initiated by the police (community policing) have helped them deal with the crime.

He further said that the cooperation with neighboring Uganda has helped  curb the importing of illegal brew, which has been associated to GBV

Fidele Ndayisaba, of the Southern Province, said that the implementation of laws on GBV criminals, identifying and uniting families with wrangles have been effective in fighting the crime in the area.

"Despite being ranked among the provinces with high GBV cases, the crime has reduced compared to the previous years. With the help of police gender desks at all districts and community policing, we are now able to prevent crimes before they are committed,” Ndayisaba said.

The recently released statistics by the Rwanda National Police indicated that the Southern province had the second highest number of GBV cases (318), behind Kigali city which had 510 of the 1572 cases registered between January and June 2010.

The Eastern province was the third with 313 followed the Western Province.

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