The City of Kigali in partnership with UN Women Rwanda is implementing Safe and inclusive Cities of Women and Girls in City of Kigali (Safe Cities) which responds to an urgent need to collect data and design workable interventions in tackling the concerns around sexual harassment and violence against women and girls. Drawing on lessons and good practices shared by UN Women Safe Cities Global Programme, the project is based on a holistic approach to improve safety in public spaces in City of Kigali for women and girls and to enable them to exercise their rights to enjoy those spaces.
The key pillars of intervention of the “Kigali Safe City Project” is organized around efforts to:
i) Increase knowledge about factors that lead to limited safety and gender exclusion in the City of Kigali, responding to a lack of data and evidence on women’s safety and perceptions of safety;
ii) Improve response by key stakeholders for increased safety and gender exclusion in Kigali City which include capacity to develop better policies and programmes for prevention of violence against women and girls in Kigali;
iii) Build wider awareness of communities on women’s safety and gender inclusion.

To achieve this objective strategic partnership with other Central Government institutions including Mayors of City districts, heads of Sectors and Civil Society Organizations and UN Women have been forged to improve policies and programmes to prevent and respond to sexual harassment and other forms of violence in public spaces. These initiatives will benefit not only women and girls as users of public spaces in Kigali but also the national government, especially the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion to develop replicable interventions in other cities taking the opportunity of the Government of Rwanda’s plan to promote secondary cities. Safe Cities is done through engagement with women and girls in the communities, applying innovative and participatory ways of data collection using Women Safety Audits (WSAs).

To learn more about this offer, read the Terms of Reference