Come July this year, Rwanda will present its first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) report to the UN on the state of their implementation. One of the goals regard peace, justice and building strong institutions, which is such a large area to cover. But there is one area the media fraternity has been discussing; safety of journalists, especially sexual harassment in newsrooms. Rwandans are very reserved people whenever it comes to intimacy. For fear of losing face and becoming the subject of conversations, many victims would rather go to the grave with their secrets. A macho-kind like society also does not make things any easier. But when people talk about sexual harassment, the finger does not only point towards the direction of men, some also suffer the same at the hands of women, especially their superiors So it is all about the power and control they wield over their victims. So, now that the cat is out of the bag, it is time for media houses to fold their sleeves and put in place serious measures to curb the vice. This newspaper is the first one to roll out a sexual harassment policy which it is willing to share with other media houses, and has already begun doing so. This SDG indicator is just a cog in the large wheel; there is still a lot of ground to cover, so the journey will be shortened if every concerned sector goes to work. After all, wasn’t Kigali designated the seat of the SDG Africa Centre? It was not a stroke of luck, so we need to live to our billing because we are capable of going all the way.
