Global Issues

Rwanda

• About 250,000 to 500,000 women and girls targeted for rape in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

• Rwanda is a source and, to a lesser extent, destination country for women and children subjected to sex trafficking.

• Rwandan girls exploited in domestic servitude within the country; some of these children experience nonpayment of wages or physical or sexual abuse.

• Older females offer vulnerable younger girls room and board, eventually pushing them into prostitution to pay for their keep.

• In limited cases, trafficking facilitated by women  supplying other women or girls to clients or by loosely organized prostitution networks, some operating in secondary schools and universities.

• Brothel owners reportedly supply girls and young women in prostitution to clients staying at hotels for conferences.

• Rwandan children also are recruited and transported to Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania and subjected to prostitution.

• Studies show Rwandan women who have experienced partner violence are more likely to contract HIV than those who have not.

• 30.7% of women in Rwanda report intimate partner physical violence in their lifetime.

• 12.9% of women report sexual intimate partner violence in their lifetime.

• 30.7% of women report intimate partner and/or non-partner physical violence in their lifetime.

• 10.2% report abuse during pregnancy.

 

Advocacy:

• Police hotline for domestic violence, an examination room, and trained counselors who provide access to a police hospital for more intensive interventions

 

Sources: United Nations Development Fund for Women; UN Women Violence against Women Prevalence Data: Surveys by Country 2011; U.S. Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report, U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2011