Road still long, women advised

African women have achieved a lot in the last 15 years,but so much more needs to be done to achieve all-round sustainable women rights, Marie Louise Baricako, the Executive Director of Femmes Africa Solidarité (FAS) has said. She said this during the official opening of the “Great Lakes Consultative workshop for the implementation of regional and International instruments on women rights”. “We are here to assess ourselves, and sincerely speaking, we have more than enough instruments (on women rights). We have advocated and achieved, what remains right now is implementation,” she said. The meeting particularly discussed the UN Security Council Resolutions 1325, the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discriminations Against Women (CEDAW), and the Beijing Platform for Action. Baricako congratulated Rwanda for its promotion of gender rights and balance and praised President Paul Kagame for pushing for women’s rights at all levels. “I would like to congratulate Rwanda upon their promotion of gender rights and balance, something that we at Femmes Africa Solidarité, recognise and rewarded the President for two years ago,” she said “When we look back at 1996 and where we are today, we have achieved a lot, but though such big steps have been made, there is quite a lot that still needs to be done”. The Minister for Gender and Family Promotion, Dr Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya , said that the achievements by Rwandan women were mainly a result of good governance and exemplary leadership. She pointed out to the participants that gender equality was a fundamental right in Rwanda that it had been included in the national constitution. The workshop was organized by the Parliament of Rwanda through the Rwanda Women Parliamentary Forum in collaboration with the Secretariat of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) and funded by Femmes Africa Solidarité (FAS). The workshop attracted participants from Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Ends