Kigali, 10^th October 2018-The two campaigns were jointly launched this Thursday, 11^th October 2018 at the same time celebrating the International Day of the Girl under the theme ‘Building a family we want: Say No to Child Defilement=’Twubake Umuryango twifuza turwanya gusambanya abana’. The #Girl2Leader Campaign objective is to encourage girls to unlock their leadership potential, participate into politics at early age whilst the Governance and Welfare Campaign aims at recalling different categories including parents, children, youth, leaders, teachers, partners and the community in general to prevent and combat child defilement. The event brought together more than 300 Young girls invited from secondary schools, Universities, and Technical Schools across the Country. They interacted with high ranking officials about girls’ empowerment, how to unlock their leadership potential and issues affecting the girl child including child defilement and teenage pregnancy. The Speaker of the Parliament, Lower House who was the Chief Guest, Honorable Mukabalisa Donatille said: ‘’I want to call upon everyone present here and those who are following us especially parents, teachers, children and the youth to continue speaking up and report child defilement perpetrators, to fight against them and responding to their effects in order to protect children, preventing and responding to teenage pregnancies.’ The Minister of Gender and Family Promotion reiterated that those who defile children and impregnate underage girls should be held accountable. ‘Child defilement perpetrators should be punished. We will not accept that perpetrators get stronger than us (the government). We request a collaboration with parents and children as well in reporting on time so that perpetrators are brought to book.’- Minister Nyirasafari accentuated. Minister Nyirasafari added that while the Government is focusing on pregnancy, it is also aware that there are diseases like HIV that teenagers can be infected if they have unprotected sex. To this note, she said that there have been discussions with other stakeholders like the Ministry of Health on how to start looking into safe sex. The Governance and Family Welfare Campaign will be conducted until 10^th December, 2018 on the day that Rwanda will join the rest of the world to celebrate the International Day of Human Rights. During the campaign, Rwanda will also celebrate the International Rural Women’s Day on 18^th October 2018. The campaign will be conducted in all districts with a special focus in 17 districts including 7 poorest namely Burera, Gicumbi, Gisagara, Nyaruguru, Ngororero, Nyamasheke and Rutsiro and 10 districts having high number of teen mothers namely Gatsibo, Nyagatare, Kirehe, Bugesera, Gasabo, Rubavu, Kayonza, Musanze, Ngoma and Rwamagana. The Ministry along with other key partners will identify teen mothers, assess their needs, provide dialogues on reproductive health to youth and parents through different forum such as Evening Parent/Umugoroba w’Ababyeyi. There will also be Birth registration of children including those of teen mothers, counseling to parents of teen mothers. In Response and rehabilitation teen mothers will be supported according to their needs, they will be provided with legal aid as well.  The Girl2Leader is a campaign that was launched by the Women Political Leaders Global Forum (WPL). The Women Political Leaders Global Forum (WPL) is the global network of female politicians with the mission to increase both the number and the influence of women in political leadership positions.