Kigali - The National Annual Conference on Social Protection Sector is being held from today 12th to 13th February 2019 at Serena Hotel, Kigali. Under the leitmotiv which goes: “Social Protection Achievements and lessons learnt, an attraction for Social Protection Actors to invest more in human capital development in Rwanda”, the conference is purposely organized to provide an opportunity for sharing consolidated evidence on achievements, challenges and lessons learnt in the social protection sector and identify opportunities for further strengthening the social protection system based on evidence from Rwanda and elsewhere in the region.

In more specific terms, the objectives of this event are:

1. To increase awareness and understanding of the impact and effectiveness of key social protection interventions among a broader range of stakeholders;
2. To increase awareness and understanding of the National Social Protection Policy and SP-SSP (2018-2024);
3. To enable social protection sector actors to access information on key social protection policy developments and lessons learnt elsewhere in the region.

Organized by MINALOC, and supported by DFID and the World Bank (through the World Bank-funded ‘Strengthening Social Protection Project’ (SSPP), this conference gathered social protection sector actors including ministries, Government agencies, Districts & City of Kigali, Development Partners (DFID, UNICEF, WB, WFP, SDG Center, FAO, UNDP, Sweden Embassy, Dutch Embassy, Power of Nutrition, Embassy of Japan, Embassy of Korea, ILO, UNDP, USAID), Civil Society, International NGOs and Local NGOs representatives, and the Parliament.

In her opening address to participants, the State Minister in charge of Social Affairs and Social Protection within the Ministry of Local Government, Dr. Alivera MUKABARAMBA declared that “Even though a lot has been achieved, there is still need of collective action to improve the livelihoods of citizens … the role of the private sector, the civil society, local and international NGOs is of paramount importance to attain the goals of NST1 & SDGs in terms of social protection”.

Social protection in Rwanda is characterized by social safety nets and complementary programmes that are designed to address social and economic vulnerabilities of beneficiaries and provide a range of social and livelihood services that respond to their needs. The programmes into question include VUP Direct Support, VUP Public Works, VUP Nutrition Sensitive Direct Support, Ubudehe, Education assistance and Direct Support to Genocide Survivors, One Cow per Poor Family, Early Childhood development interventions, to name but a few.

These programmes have tremendously contributed to poverty and extreme poverty reduction in the aftermath of the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi. Statistically, figures from the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR) indicate that since Year 2000, the poverty rate has fallen from about 60% to 38.2% by 2016/2017. Then since 2005/06 the extreme poverty rate has fallen from 35.8% in 2005/2006, to 24.1% by 2010/2011, to 16.4% by 2013/2014, and then to 16% by 2016/2017.

Participants to the conference were taken through achievements, success stories, as well as underlying challenges to the implementation of social protection programs. They were all called upon to join hands with the government of Rwanda to respond to social protection challenges and help all poor households to graduate from extreme poverty, and to actively participate and support the forthcoming exercise for revision of Ubudehe categorization.