The Forum Des Femmes Rwandaises Parlementaires: Case Study

The Forum des Femmes Rwandaises Parlementaires (FFRP) started in 1996 with the purpose to contribute to building a gender sensitive society. The Forum has 87 members among them 56 women, ten of which are women senators and 27 men from both chambers. When it was first formed it was exclusively a forum for women legislators but men partisans have joined since 2008 (FFRP, 2016). In 2005, the Forum produced a strategic plan whose key action focus was “the adoption of gender-sensitive laws, through stages of initiating laws in the Parliament taking gender into account, especially basing on recommendations from mission reports adopted by the Parliament and on the basis of analysis of draft laws initiated by the government with a gender perspective”
The process was two way as the legislators also took this as an opportunity to receive recommendations at the grassroots level (Pearson 2008, 23). The FFRP met with stakeholders from the various ministries where it resolved to have the law in place by the end of 2006. In the same year, FFRP met with community leaders and hired consultants to compile information related to GBV in Rwanda . The FFRP designed a questionnaire about GBV which was distributed to senior level officers in civil society organizations. An international consultant was invited to compile a set of best practices in international law related to sexual violence. The document acted as a starting point for the national conference, which was being planned in Kigali (Pearson 2008, 22). This was then followed by a massive media campaign by all parliamentarians on both radio and television. Between October and November 2005 the FFRP organized trips to the field which saw them return to the districts for discussions and produced a follow-up document listing recommendations gathered from the population (Pearson 2008, 22). Out of 106 (80 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 26 in the Senate), 76 parliamentarians participated in grass roots meetings, with approximately half of them being men. In November 2005, the FFRP collaborated with the National Women's Council to
And there is goodwill, so through our strategic plan we are developing also, some training making our parliament gender sensitive with specific tools to do gender analysis, not only in the budget but also in different policies and different laws. We have begun to work through an action plan with our main points of our strategic plan. The first one is capacity building of our forum and our members. The second one is gender in law, how to draft law that is gender sensitive. The third one is gender in the mission and the structure of parliament. Also, as parliamentarian women, we are mobilizing the whole parliament indeed the whole population against gender-based violence. We will do also research to make policy, to make gender strategy against gender-based violence and we will do a special law. So we are preparing a national conference to discuss our proposition of this strategy and to share jobs” (Initiative for Inclusive Security,2005).
THE ROLE OF CIVIL