In a yet-to-be released Transparency International Rwanda (TIR) report on gender-based corruption (GBC), secondary schools and higher learning institutions are on the spot for high GBC, at 36.1 percent and 42.6 percent respectively.
Students and officials interviewed by The New Times said that the schools they went to or worked at didn’t have anti-sexual harassment policies, and that even if they did, they weren’t informed.
In an interview with The New Times’ Glory Iribagiza, Leonne Laura Uwizihiwe, the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Manager at Kepler Kigali Campus shared tips on how to prevent and handle sextortion and sexual harassment in learning institutions.
Sextortion is a term used to describe abuse of authority in which sex is the currency of the bribe. It is a nexus between corruption and sexual exploitation, where students and employees are potential victims.
Why is it important to have a practical anti-sexual harassment policy in schools?
Education institutions always have a big number of people from different backgrounds, with different thoughts and opinions. People tend to come with positive and negative attitudes to the workplace.
It is important to not only have sexual harassment policies. It is important to have policies that protect each individual who has access to our programs and campus.
In order to prepare our students to be the citizens we want them to be, from service delivery, solving problems the communities are having, we have to make sure that we give them academic content, but also, prepare them mentally to be the people who will serve the community and also to help them to learn that every person matters.
How do you introduce the policy to new people and keep everyone at the campus aware of it?
We have a sexual harassment policy within our student handbooks and also our staff handbooks, because anyone can be harassed, any gender, any age.
One of the reasons why we have this policy is because we know worldwide, even the TIR report demonstrate that sexual harassment is happening, and it is traumatizing. Even us who have gone through the community, they system, we have faced all of that and we still deal with issues that we have gone through.
To make sure that the policy doesn’t sit in our computers, every time that we have new students, we have them on boarding period where we introduce the anti-sexual harassment policy.
Even staff, when they start working here, we have a diversity team in charge of on boarding for all new students and staff.
We help you to understand what it means, why we do that and the expected outcomes. Even though we do that all the time, we also have refreshers to make sure that people still understand.
In the policy, how is sexual harassment defined?
So, we defined sexual harassment here in two categories. One is quid pro quo, which means ‘this for that’. So, I am going to give you marks if you let me touch you, if you are having coffee with me, if you have sex with me, if you accept to go on a date with me, and you deny students to access you in public spaces or their rights to education, their rights to feedback on their assignments because you want to take advantage of them.
Many people think it becomes sexual harassment when sex is involved, when sexual desires are involved, but sometimes, sexual desires may not be involved.
Just because you have power over someone and you want to give them services if they decide to give you this but in a sexual way, to satisfy your desire towards them.
Another way is creating a hostile environment. We do believe that people can commit sexual harassment by creating hostile environment. For instance, when people comment on other people’s bodies, you understand it is not about sexual desires.
I can sexually harass you, and we are both women. But I can do that. You know how people in Rwanda relate some parts of the body with sex. When someone passes by and the other says that this person has big lips and it means they have a big vagina. They look at men’s fingers and relate them with their penises and all of that.
We define creating a hostile environment when you are commenting about people’s bodies, and relate it with their gender or sexuality. It doesn’t matter if you have sexual desires or not. But if I come to work dressing like this and you relate me with gay or lesbian because I am dressed in a masculine way, that is creating a hostile environment.
And we know that people are sexually harassed even when they are not present. For instance, if we sit here and we talk about a guy that we work with and we talk about how he can be good in bed and all of that, we are creating a hostile environment even if the guy doesn’t know that, but we are talking about him in a sexual way.
How is the policy understood among students and staff?
When we started training people, some of them had issues of what we would be talking about. But it was worth the try, because we do have a lot of fun here, we have a lot of things that we talk about without necessarily harassing one another.
But in our policy, we also make sure that we teach people how to be comfortable talking about it if they do not like what you have said. We give people time to learn and unlearn and relearn.
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If someone is new and they have been in an environment that tolerates sexual harassment, they tend to have those bad jokes, commenting about people’s bodies, and you know, it is something Rwandans do without saying.
We make sure that we also help people to process that sexual harassment is bad without creating fear.
What is the reporting process like?
With how we have been raised, some people may not feel comfortable to say ‘hey, what you are saying is not good’ so they also have room to tell someone to do it for them.
But we also have cases that we cannot tolerate, that we don’t want people to solve amicably. If it comes to sexual assault, if it is really painful and insulting, we suggest that people report that and we have investigations by the committee, which is chaired by the CEO herself, and we make sure that the parties are given justice.
There is an anonymous form where a person can report and we immediately start investigations.
We also have the campus counsellor and the nurse, and we make sure that we deal with justice, but also deal with the traumatic aspect that this could have caused.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
