English
Kinyarwanda
The Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIGP) in charge of Administration and Personnel, DCG Jeanne Chantal Ujeneza, on Monday, October 19, officially opened a pilot Training of Trainers (ToT) on gender-responsive policing at Rwanda National Police (RNP) General Headquarters in Kacyiru, Kigali.
The five-day training brings together police officers and other law enforcement personnel from 10 Eastern Africa Police Chiefs Cooperation Organisation (EAPCCO) member countries: Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda.
The training focuses on the Handbook on Gender-Responsive Law Enforcement and the Trainer’s Guide, developed under the Empowering Every Badge project in partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and UN Women, with financial support from the Federal Government of Germany.
Speaking at the opening, DIGP Ujeneza urged participants to turn their knowledge into institutional capacity by sharing it with their colleagues and advocating for the integration of the materials into national police training programmes.
“The training of trainers is meant to transform your individual knowledge into institutional capacity since it will equip you with knowledge, skills, and facilitation techniques needed to train your colleagues back home on gender equality, gender-sensitive service delivery and the protection of the rights and dignity of all people,” she said.
She added that the initiative’s success would be reflected in community satisfaction and officers’ ability to identify, prevent, document and appropriately respond to gender-based violence (GBV) and other gender-related cases.
Mr Africa S. Apollo, EAPCCO Chief Executive and Head of the INTERPOL Regional Bureau for Eastern Africa in Nairobi, said the pilot training was necessary to test the documents before their wider implementation across member countries.
“We realized that the handbook alone was not enough, because it needed to be understood by other police officers who did not participate in its development,” Apollo said, explaining the need for the Trainer’s Guide.
He called on participants to provide honest feedback on how the materials could be applied in their respective national contexts.
“Your feedback is extremely important,” he said, adding that participants’ contributions would help refine the documents and strengthen their implementation across the region.
