The Minister of Defence, Maj Gen Albert Murasira, has said that the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) is looking to increase the proportion of women in its rank and file, adding that currently women constitute only about 6 per cent of its uniformed personnel.
He disclosed this at Parliament this Tuesday as he responded to MP Alice Muzana’s concern over the relatively small number of women in Rwanda’s peacekeeping military contingents.
Muzana is the vice chairperson of the Chamber of Deputies’ Committee on Foreign Affairs, Cooperation and Security, which Murasira was briefing on the country’s peacekeeping missions abroad.
The Defence minister said that, of the 73,731 troops Rwanda has deployed to peacekeeping missions since 2004, only 1,792 were women, representing just 2.4 per cent.
The deployments are under two main frameworks, including United Nations missions, and bilateral arrangements with some countries including Central African Republic (CAR) and Mozambique.
"It is still low,” Murasira said of women’s proportion among the country’s servicemen and women, blaming the trend on misplaced historical gender biases around the nature of the role of armed forces.
However, there has been a steady rise in the number of women joining RDF in recent years, he added.
"There is an upward trend,” he said, underlining that women are as good as men in all aspects of the military.
He also observed that military roles are not limited to combat as there are other critical non-combat roles that need to be filled by both men and women.
Gen Murasira particularly highlighted the efficiency of women in peacekeeping missions, especially in managing situations involving women and children.
Generally, women are hugely underrepresented in UN field missions globally, with 2020 figures putting them at 7.8 per cent of all uniformed, military, police, justice and corrections personnel in field missions.
The figure is much smaller in military contingents, at around 4.8 per cent.
The United Nations has set a target of increasing women representation in its military contingents to at least 15 per cent by 2028.
Today, the minister said, Rwanda maintains 5,752 troops in missions abroad, with the country ranking fourth largest contributor of peacekeepers globally.