In accordance with the work plan of the project, a review meeting is held every quarter to review the achievements of the CRPs (the Community Resource Persons) within the 26 sectors of Kayonza and Nyagatare Districts, where the project is being implemented. This meeting is also used to plan for the next quarter.

The meeting was attended by a delegation from USAID (composed by Gloria Jean Garland (Office Director), Joseph Rurangwa (Governance specialist), Dieudonné Kalinganire (Program Assistant) and Amber Lucero Dwyer (Senior Outreach and Communication Officer)).The meeting was led by the Haguruka National Executive Secretary who, together with the delegation, made a field visit to Ruramira Sector, Kayoza District where they heard testimonies from some beneficiaries of the project.

On October 25, 2018, Haguruka was visited by Johan Bergendorff, a Global Health Correspondent and journalist from Swedish Radio (Oxenstiernsgatan 20, 105 10 Stockholm). The purpose of the visit was to access and appreciate Haguruka’s roles in promoting and protecting women and children’s rights. Portion of the visit, the Journalist visited different places to understand and get insights on Haguruka’s activities towards improving rights of women and children especially access to justice services for Gender-Based Violence (GBV) victims. The visitor was accompanied by Haguruka National Executive Secretary, Ninette Umurerwa to better provide enough information and respond to visitor’s questions. The visit was impressive to an extent where the Journalist expressed his sincere appreciation to Haguruka for promoting equal rights and duties for both gender in the economic, judicial, and social-cultural field.

In Haguruka’s journey towards attaining its vision of creating a society where women and children can enjoy equal rights and reach their full potential, the organization has initiated 16-days of activism for ending women and children violence. In this regard, on November 25, 2018, Haguruka’s team marched with other people to reinforce the message of “stopping Gender-Based Violence against women”. In accordance with Haguruka’s program of awareness raising and social mobilization, the event was necessary and beneficial as its main theme of “making the family that we envision by fighting against child’s sexual violence” indicates.

The research by Haguruka in the eastern province, reveals that 53% of teen mothers willingly slept with their male partners, but none of these has planned to have children. All the pregnancies appeared as unwanted for these girls. Like other GBV Victims in general, the teen mother needs special attention and social protection in their challenging lives as teenagers and mothers at the same time.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Health, the year 2016 alone 17,444 teenagers had unwanted pregnancies across the country. As result, there are big numbers of teen mothers and their children who faced challenges in society. And these are only those who went to health centers and hospitals for treatment; and they were between 16 and 17, not bellow.

Imbalance in sex negotiation and lack of awareness of sexual health

Haguruka has identified challenges faced by teen mothers so that the whole community could work hand in hand to handle them. Among other challenges, “Imbalance in sex negotiation”. For this, the research revealed that almost teen mothers slept with males that were older than them, this causes the incapacity to negotiate the kind and conditions of having sex which resulted in getting unwanted pregnant.

The narrative testimonies of teen mothers display five scenarios that occasioned intercourse. First, some girls declare that they did sex out of mutual consensus and that they consciously chose to sleep with the man because both wanted to do so.

Second, there are girls who are trapped in the course of seeking long-term love, expecting marriage with the man. At this point, young men in the age of marriage, especially those who started building their own house, pretend to love girls and to have marriage project with the girls. But most of them reject these girls after sleeping with them.

Third, girls are trapped because of their poverty. When they are in need and that a man is promising to help, they accept the support as well as related conditions, including having sex.

Fourth, other undefined occasions are conducive to violating girls. Young men have a lot of strategies to attract girls. Some of them invite girls in their homes, others plan a walk together, other pretend to be sick and ask girls to pay a visit to them, others use other girls to invite their colleagues on young men’s behalf, all such appointments end with violating those girls but they keep quiet.

Lastly, there are adult people who abuse their position and status in violating girls who are under their responsibility. At this point, one girl mentions, “I went to our training room, he then invited me to a room, he removed my underwear and slept with me. When he finished, I went home and did not scream because I was afraid of him”. 

It is therefore visible that girls are surrounded by situations that they are not always able to control and that culminate into having sex. Other challenges are like Abandonment of School, Social integration, health Insurance, the disclosure of male partners, Unregistered birth, and rejection by their lovers.

Therefore, teen mothers need awareness in matters of Sexual and Reproductive Health knowledge they cannot get an unwanted pregnancy. They need awareness around sexual and Gender-Based Violence.

Then so, Teen mothers need survival means in order to face survival challenges in society, they need to be integrated into society, not as dependent, but as producers and contributors to the development of the country with due dignity. They need to pursue their studies and secure their future even if they don’t have their husband, but they are still young, they can contribute a lot to the Country.

Haguruka calls upon the Community to stand and support teenage mothers. Haguruka is a Rwandan non-governmental organization, founded in 1991. Haguruka means “Stand up” in Kinyarwanda. So, standing up for the rights of women and children.

It is in this context that on January 24, 2019, at Kigali Olympic Hotel, Haguruka cooperatively with Trocaire presented an assessment carried out in the five selected District as a place where Haguruka focused its interventions in relation with women and children’s rights.

These districts include Nyaruguru, Nyamagabe, and Nyanza in Southern Province; and Gakenke and Rulindo in Nothern Province. And, this study was conducted to map out Gender-Based Violence (GBV) service providers and establish GBV victim’s system path-way from a community to the National level.

Henceforth, the study’s main objectives include mapping out GBV service providers, assessing the efficiency of an existing referral pathway involving sexual and domestic violence, proposing the desired referral pathway as emerged from the data, assessing the clarity of responsibilities and competences of the staff assigned to deal with GBV issues, and even identifying gaps in GBV issues solving process, and suggest solutions.

The event was so important and productive at a level where Haguruka National Executive Secretary, Ninette Umurerwa, took a time to express her gratitude to all the participants, particularly by appreciating the provided ideas in terms of comments and recommendations which will be taken into consideration while refining and finalizing the research report and GBV victim’s System Pathway.

In the same way for other civil society organizations, Haguruka is glad to participate in the Justice Week. This week was organized by the Ministry of Justice and it has been marked by JRLOS open day on Monday 18^th March 2019, and it will be closed by a friendly football match on Friday 22^nd March 2019. This is a week of putting into practice several organized activities aimed at increasing citizen’s awareness on emerging crimes and on the way the Justice, Reconciliation, Law, and Order Sector (JRLOS) institutions and partners organization working within a Sector-Wide Approach (SWAP) while delivering justice related services to citizens.

It’s against this background that Haguruka has joined other organizations, which work with Justice Sector, at the Ministry of Justice Headquarter-Parking area, to showcase how it works closely with others to deliver justice related services to Rwandan citizens. During the exhibition, Haguruka’s legal department got a chance to provide such services to its right-holders as a way to strengthen its role of ensuring that Sector institutions get closer to citizens and citizens become aware of their rights, as well as getting informed on where to easily access justice services.

This “In-School Girls Training Module” was prepared by Haguruka under the “Ingo z’Amahoro” project which is being funded by Kvinna Till Kvinna, an international Organization originated from Sweden. It is in this context that Haguruka has prepared it for “Engaging Girls on Prevention of Gender-Based Violence, understand Sexual &Reproductive health, Women Rights, Self-confidence, Decision-making, and Planning for the Future”. This module will be mainly used in secondary school to empower girls.

On Friday 29^th March 2019, at Five to Five Hotel, Haguruka was delighted to prove the validity of the module, where a large number of the partners and some representative from the target audiences were the attendees of the validation workshop.

The validation meeting was so productive since the participants enjoyed it by providing a variety of ideas in term of comments and recommendation of what should be revised in order to have a convincing and effectual module. In fact, from the provided recommendation, Haguruka has realized that there is still a revision of the module basically on using GBV-related terminologies and updated laws. Haguruka has appreciated a lot the provided recommendation and comments over the drafted module, and it has promised the participants that all those inputs are going to be considered while revising and finalizing the module.

Over the past few years, Haguruka’s staff members and Board member’s reflection meeting had played a big role in its journey towards achieving its mission of promoting and defending women and children’s rights. It is in this context that Haguruka has prepared a reflection meeting for its staff members and board of directors. And, this was scheduled so that the staff members can reflect back on their key achievements, performances, challenges they have faced as well as structuring and compiling action plans of the activities expected to be implemented in this year of 2019.

The reflection meeting was held on 15^th February 2019 at Silent Hotel in Kayonza District. And, the majority of staff members had some presentations to deliver in relation to their respective departments.  Additionally, all Haguruka staff members were invited; including those who are based in the regional centers. The meeting was so productive since they had reached to all the expected outcomes including the clear set of actions plans for the activities to be implemented in this year of 2019, and even the meeting had left them with a common understanding on how to best and effectively put into practice all the recommendations gained from the meeting.

Dutch MPs pose for a photo with the Executive Secretary of Haguruka and Director of Legal Aid Forum at Haguruka the offices.