World first for Rwanda

2008-09-19 10:37

Kigali - Rwanda became the first country in the world where women outnumber men in Parliament, according to provisional results announced on Thursday at the close of a four-day legislative vote.

Women won 20 of the 53 seats attributed in direct elections. In Rwanda's unique voting system, another 24 seats are reserved for women in an indirect vote.

According to an official close to the youth council, a woman may also have won one of the two seats reserved for Rwandan youth.

With 44 guaranteed seats, women would account for at least 55% of the lower chamber in Rwanda.

According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), that would place Rwanda far ahead of Sweden, where women account for 47% of Parliament, and third-placed Cuba, where 43.2% of lawmakers are women.

"The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) welcomes this historical result. For the first time, an elected national parliament has a majority of women," said IPU Secretary General Anders B Johnsson in a statement.

According to provisional results announced on Monday, President Paul Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front already secured a majority in the elections.

The vote, only the second Parliamentary polls since the 1994 genocide in which at least 800 000 people were killed, began on Monday and closed on Thursday with the vote for the seat reserved for the disabled.

Rwanda already had the world's most gender-equal Parliament, with women controlling 48% of seats in the outgoing legislature.

Kagame has earned international praise for granting women access to the political arena on a continent where, according to the IPU, the average percentage of women in Parliament stands at a lowly 17%.

The proportion of women in politics is also a result of the imbalance in the country's population, so many men having been killed in the genocide and others having fled.

According to the electoral commission, women account for 55% of the 4.7 million registered voters.

Bellancilla Nyonawankusi, a Kigali official responsible for ensuring the smooth running of the voting, said women lawmakers carried a double burden.

"The role of the elected females is double: they must on the one hand concern themselves with the implementation of government decisions, and on the other be a voice for the grassroots," she said.

"All Rwandans have a role to play in the reconciliation, but women can do it better than men.

"They are the ones who were the first to be affected by the genocide and they are the ones who are bringing up the children," she added.

- AFP