Kigali-19 July 2018-The call was made today at the launch of ‘It Takes Every Rwandan To End Child Exploitation’, a campaign which aims at calling all Rwandans to join hands in the fight to eliminate child labor and sexual abuse. Speaking at the event Minister Espérance Nyirasafari greeted World Vision Rwanda to have initiated the 5-years project that tackles one of the critical components of human rights being fighting against child exploitation adding that the project is part of a national effort to end violence against children. According to recent statistics of the labour-force survey-pilot, NISR, 2016, the percentage of working children 14 to 17 years old was 30.7%, almost half of them working with pay in an employment activity whilst 29% of the total number of children in Rwanda aged between 5 and 14 years old had been victims of child labour at the time of UNICEF’s release of their State of the World’s Children 2016. Minister Nyirasafari, said that winning the fight against all these form of child exploitation, requires joining hands. ‘It is obvious that we cannot win the fight against these offences all on our own – we need everyone to join this movement. What does it take? It takes every Rwandan joining together to end child exploitation. With this campaign, our promise is to tirelessly advocate for an end to child labour and sexual abuse; to highlight it when it occurs and hold those responsible to account, and to support the survivors.’-echoed Minister Nyirasafari She added that: “Ending violence is in the hands of parents, teachers, government officials and religious leaders, ending violence is in the hands of businesses and civil society activists, and ending violence is in the hands of children. They know what is right and they deserve to be heard.” Bishop John Rucyahana, the chairperson of the Rwanda Religious Leaders Forum challenged religious leaders, churches and followers saying that churches are meant to prevent child exploitation to happen and it is their commitment to do so. The Government of Rwanda has, for many years, been implementing different initiatives to promote child rights and protection and the achievements have been quite remarkable. Since 2016, more than 8300 children have been rescued from child labour and brought back to school while 98.9% of reported child defilement cases were handled by courts between June 2017 and July 2018. According to Moses Kwehangana, Advocacy Gender Mainstreaming Manager at World vision, the campaign’s overall goal is to contribute to increased protection of children from child labour and sexual abuse by 2022. The 5-years campaign will be implemented across the country through different partners, costing approximately $2 million.