WESTERN PROVINCE

RUBAVU — Over 500 children, mostly girls, dropped out of school in Muhanda sector to work on tea plantations and farms in Gishwati, last year, an official said.

Addressing participants attending a seminar on domestic violence this week, Osie Twayigize the sector coordinator, warned parents against engaging school children in child labour.

The three-day seminar held in Gisenyi town was meant to educate local and opinion leaders on ways of combating gender violence.

Rubavu district health officer Claude Niyomahoro noted that gender violence was still a big challenge in the district and called on local leaders to step up the fight against the vice.

"As local leaders, we need to stand up against gender violence because it is a common problem in our society. We need to deal with it’s perpetrators to ensure a balanced and conducive environment for all,” he said.

He noted that there was need for sensitization seminars on gender violence because most people are still ignorant of the magnitude, causes, and consequences of gender violence.

Niyomahoro attributed rape or sexual assault to dominance character and an apparent need to humiliate the victim. He said that other forms of gender violence such as women battering and other non-sexual domestic abuse by men are equally done in an effort to assert dominance.

He urged local leaders to advocate for girls’ education and desist from "the traditional belief of marrying off girls at a tender age for bride price.” He blamed the high number of female school drop outs to such culture.

During the seminar, participants who included among others head teachers, women leaders, and representatives of the Genocide survivors; from three sectors of Rubavu, Gisenyi and Nyamyumba discussed various forms of gender violence in schools; by teachers, subjecting children to heavy work, denying women the right to contribute ideas in society, rape, and defilement among others.

Participants vowed to always help victims of gender violence to attain justice by advising and helping them to report their cases to police. They also promised to share the attained knowledge with others in order to combat gender violence in the district.

Sector leaders also promised to include the fight against gender violence in their annual targets as well as in the performance contracts to weed out the vice.

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