Rwanda Governance Board (RGB) has recommended fast-tracking the categorization of people with living disabilities to increase their access to essential services such as health, and education among others. Disabled people have to be classified into different categories depending on the nature of their disability with the aim to help them get assistance tailored to suit their needs. The recommendation is based on Rwanda Governance Scorecard ninth edition whose findings were presented on October 14. The index on the state of governance in Rwanda focuses on eight pillars. These include rule of law, political rights, civil liberties, participation and inclusiveness, safety and security, investing in human and social development, anti-corruption, transparency and accountability, quality of service delivery as well as economic and corporate governance. According to the index, investing in human and social development recorded the lowest performance in terms of governance with a score of 75.8 per cent. “The performance of this pillar was affected by issues in social protection for people with disabilities and climate change resilience. When you don’t mainstream climate change, everything you do will be at risk on the basis of not being able to have climate resilience as intended,” said RGB CEO, Ustah Kayitesi. Supporting people with disabilities is part of social protection which is an indicator to measure the performance of investing in human and social development. The index shows that out of 446,453 people with disabilities, only 154,236 have been categorized as of 2022. Categorization of people with disabilities has performed at only 34.5 per cent, Kayitesi said. The index showed social protection for people with disabilities got a score of 42 per cent. As of 2022, 20,867 people with disabilities out of 40,000 targeted were covered by social protection. It shows that 17,255 people with disabilities had access to inclusive education out of 42,325 that are targeted. “Social protection is for all of those that are vulnerable but when there is disability as an addition, how we engage should also be considered for that particular disability. We have to enhance efficiency and effectiveness in the management of social protection programs for people with disabilities,” she noted. How eight pillars performed In the Scorecard, five pillars namely safety and security, rule of law, political rights and civil liberties, anti-corruption, transparency, and accountability as well as participation and inclusiveness got a score of above 80 per cent with safety and security and rule of law pillars performing best at 95.5 percent and 90.8 percent respectively. Three pillars namely investing in human and social development, quality of service delivery, and economic and corporate governance recorded a score of between 60 per cent and 79.9 per cent with human and social development recording the lowest (75.8 percent). “This quantifiable index that gauges the state of governance in Rwanda generates data to inform policymakers.,” Kayitesi said. Some of the recommendations, she said, include devising measures to reduce backlog cases in courts. “At some point, we had backlog cases and the Court of Appeal was born from the perspective of trying to reduce the backlog of cases,” she said. Other recommendations include improving the role of non-state actors, specifically civil society organizations in promoting good governance and the fight against corruption, strengthening measures to control inflation to the minimum level possible, efforts related to the revitalization of exports promotion as well as promoting a culture of service quality in agriculture, land and public transport. “What gets measured, gets managed. What gets measured, gets done. Let’s reflect on the outcome of this edition, adjust our management approach to meet current needs, and let’s meet next year to celebrate what was done,” said Varsha Redkar Palepu, the Deputy Representative of UNDP Rwanda. Eric Mahoro, the Deputy Executive Director of Never Again Rwanda recommended the increase of capacity building for local government to improve service delivery. The index showed that the quality service delivery recorded a score of 77.69 per cent and is among the three pillars with the lowest performance. Ernest Dukuzumuremyi, the Programme Manager of Interpeace's Rwanda Programme said that there should also be indicators to measure efforts in addressing depression, suicide cases, and domestic violence cases that are on the rise. Ambassador Christine Nkulikiyinka, the CEO of Rwanda Cooperation Initiative said that the governance scorecard is a tool that will help provide good service with evidence-based recommendations as to market and commercialize the country’s home-grown solutions.
