Reporting on Conflict | Media Watch BlogPeacemakers Trust posts news, reports or announcements of interest to people studying or working in the field of dispute resolution, conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Inclusion of an item on the media watch blog does not imply endorsement or agreement of Peacemakers Trust with views expressed by authors of posted items.
After five years of trials, the grass roots courts that have judged more than one million people suspected of taking part in the 1994 Rwandan genocide are drawing to a close amidst mixed reviews.
“The whole process is expected to be over by the end of March,” Denis Bikesha, an official at the gacaca department, told AFP.
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Peacemakers Trust has received an invitation from The Sharing Way, a Canadian faith-based development agency, and its Rwandan partner, the Association des Églises Baptistes au Rwanda (AEBR), to work with them to develop a three year plan of action that responds to emerging needs and challenges in post-genocide Rwanda. The participatory planning process will involve consultation and planning meetings with a number of Rwandan church leaders from around Rwanda, including women and youth leaders.
You can become a partner in raising the costs of this initiative with a tax-deductable donation to Peacemakers Trust, a Canadian charity focused on conflict transformation and peacebuilding. (read more…)
(...more)Women in post-conflict Rwanda are working with Women for Women International, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting development for women survivors of conflict, to improve all aspects of their lives through the Commercial Integrated Farming Initiative (CIFI). The CIFI program creates links between the public, private, and nonprofit sector to empower women as autonomous economic actors. CIFI will work with 3000 Rwandan women over a three-year implementation period.
(...more)Sixteen years after genocide, Rwanda is facing a new test. President Paul Kagame, who is seeking re-election, is widely admired abroad. Among his fans are some of the world’s most famous do-gooders, from Bill Clinton and Tony Blair to Rev Rick Warren and Dr Paul Farmer. His enemies hope to use this election campaign to tarnish his image and show these admirers that he is no democrat.
Rwanda is more stable and prosperous than many would have predicted following the 1994 genocide. The reconciliation process has been at least partly successful. Yet beneath the surface, Rwandan society remains volatile. Hatreds are unexpressed, but no one believes they are gone.
Kagame’s government has passed laws against disseminating “genocide ideology”, meaning views that could inflame communal hatreds. People are supposed to describe themselves only as Rwandan, never as Hutu or Tutsi. Kagame claims these laws are necessary to keep Rwanda back from the abyss of violence.
(...more)Kigali — The symbolism was incendiary. In front of the mass graves where 250,000 genocide victims are buried, a Rwandan politician dared to speak of the Hutus who were killed in those same terrible months in 1994.
(...more)A new chapter in Euro-African relations was opened today [26 February 2010] as French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited Rwanda in an effort to mend severely strained ties; and by all accounts the diplomatic envoy was successful.
During Rwanda’s 1994 genocide of Tutsis, France backed the Hutu Habyarimana regime which carried the genocide out. Then, in 2006, a French anti-terror judged issued warrants for nine associates of current President Paul Kagame, alleging that they helped spark the genocide. This visit by Sarkozy aimed to mend wounds and offer more than hope, perhaps building on Kagame’s acceptance of the World Technology Award for Policy last year.
“For us there is no doubt that this is reconciliation,” said Rwandan Foreign Affairs Minister Louise Mushikiwabo, according to AFP. “That said, there are still some very tough issues to discuss. I think President Sarkozy is sincere. For us that is the main thing.” Not quite.
(...more)If you follow Sudan or American diplomacy you’ve heard about Khartoum’s deal with the Darfur rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) signed in Doha. Wow, it sounds terrific, that peace is upon the region. And yet fighting between Khartoum and other Darfur rebel groups like the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) persists even while those talks continue.
How does this bode for the future of diplomacy in Africa?
(...more)As the acclaimed 3D film ‘Avatar’ was today nominated for an Oscar in the Best Film category, tribal peoples around the world have claimed the film tells the real story of their lives today…
(...more)MUNDRI, Southern Sudan — Sudan’s civil war ended five years ago, but its legacy remains in the cluster bombs that can still be found on the fertile banks of the Yai River…
The presence of sub-munitions poses significant risks to this largely agrarian community. Food, charcoal, building materials and other staples are extracted from the land using methods that could easily detonate a so-called “bomblet.” As more refugees and displaced persons return to Mundri in this period of calm, the demand for land is rising.
(...more)The government of Sudan has signed a ceasefire agreement with one of the main rebel factions in Darfur.
The deal with the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) includes a framework for further talks, and the cancellation of death sentences for 100 fighters.
It is being seen as an important step towards peace, though the other main rebel group has refused to enter talks.
(...more)In past decades, much progress has been made in responding to health-care needs of conflict-affected populations. The evidence base for interventions addressing excess morbidity and mortality has expanded. Motivated by a disastrous response to the Rwanda genocide in 1994, the Sphere standards for service provision were developed, fostering quality and accountability on the basis of principles of do no harm.
(...more)KIGALI, Rwanda — Rosaria Bankundiye and Saveri Nemeye are neighbors in the tiny village of Mbyo, south of Kigali. On a steamy morning, they sit in the cool living area of the clay house Saveri helped build for Rosaria just a few years ago. Two of his sons roll around on the floor while the adults talk. At one point, Saveri leans over to say something to Rosaria and she starts laughing, her smile wide. They have known each other for a long time.
Nearly 16 years ago, during the genocide that wracked this African country of 10 million people for 100 days in 1994, Saveri murdered Rosaria’s sister, along with her nieces and nephews. Genocidaires also attacked Rosaria, her husband and their four children with machetes and left them for dead. Only Rosaria survived. Yet when Saveri came to beg her forgiveness after he was released from prison in 2004, Rosaria considered his request and then granted it. “How can I refuse to forgive when I’m a forgiven sinner, too?” she asks.
(...more)The EU is wrong to be sending observers to Sudan’s sham elections. The EU’s challenge now is to retain some credibility.
The decision by the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, to send an EU observation mission to monitor Sudan’s elections in April this year is a triumph of hope over experience. Observers will not prevent the ruling National Congress Party from rigging the process, and, worse, their presence risks legitimising a regime headed by an indicted war criminal, Omar al-Bashir.
(...more)BARDO – The Chamber of Deputies adopted, on Tuesday morning, during a plenary session held under the chairmanship of Speaker Foued Mebazaa, with attendance of some government members, a draft law providing for the ratification of the Cluster Munitions Convention.
(...more)On a day to day basis in Zimbabwe, police officers go about their business preventing crime and protecting citizens; but these officers are also deployed to repress those same citizens. Students, lawyers, trade unionists, political activists have all felt the unrelenting force of anti-riot batons as they violently disperse Zimbabweans gathering in the streets to demand human rights, equitable treatment, and greater civil liberties.
Because they march so frequently, the members of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) are often the target of this violent repression. WOZA is a grass roots movement of primarily women activists that demand a better life for all Zimbabweans through non-violent civic activism. They are grandmothers, sisters, daughters, aunts and cousins who sing and dance in the streets calling for a future for their children, families, friends and neighbors that incorporates strong human rights standards and civil liberties. And because of this, they are frequently violently beaten by the anti-riot police.
(...more)This report … describes indigenous forest peoples in Africa from an anthropological point of view [and] highlights both historical principles of international law that have affected the situation of indigenous peoples and contemporary human rights standards…
(...more)On February 4, 2010, in a landmark decision, the African Union adopted the decision by the African Commission on Human and People’s RIghts (ACHPR), which found the Kenyan government guilty of violating the rights of the country’s indigenous Endorois community, by evicting them from their lands to make way for a wildlife reserve. The commission ruled, in May 2009, that the Endorois’ eviction from their traditional land for tourism development violated their human rights. The decision creates a major legal precedent by recognizing, for the first time in Africa, indigenous peoples’ rights over traditionally owned land and their right to development.Victory for Indigenous People’s Rights in Kenya
(...more)New York – A ruling by the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights condemning the expulsion of the Endorois people from their land in Kenya is a major victory for indigenous peoples across Africa, Human Rights Watch, WITNESS, and the Endorois’ lawyers said today. The Commission ruled on February 4, 2010 that the Endorois’ eviction from their traditional land for tourism development violated their human rights.
The Kenyan government evicted the Endorois people, a traditional pastoralist community, from their homes at Lake Bogoria in central Kenya in the 1970s, to make way for a national reserve and tourist facilities. In the first ruling of an international tribunal to find a violation of the right to development, the Commission found that this eviction, with minimal compensation, violated the Endorois’ right as an indigenous people to property, health, culture, religion, and natural resources. It ordered Kenya to restore the Endorois to their historic land and to compensate them. It is the first ruling to determine who are indigenous peoples in Africa, and what are their rights to land. The case was brought on behalf of the Endorois by CEMIRIDE and Minority Rights Group International.
(...more)Following the violence of 2007/8 in Kenya, a host of initiatives, purporting to address what is wrongfully termed ‘negative ethnicity’, came into being. Parliament proceeded to pass the Ethnic and Race Relations Act, which established the National Cohesion and Integration Commission. It also established a new select committee on equality, originally intended to address gender inequality, but which now also address inequality in terms of ethnicity. The executive established a ministry to address the long-standing underdevelopment of the north of Kenya. And the Law Reform Commission of Kenya is sitting on another proposed piece of legislation, referred back to it by Cabinet, on equality and equal opportunities.
(...more)Canadian lawyer Cynthia Morel, who was born in Sept Iles, Quebec, grew up in Fredericton and studied at the University of Ottawa, is involved in some potential landmark international law cases in defence of minority rights around the world.
Africa’s top human rights body, relying partly on a Canadian precedent, issued a landmark ruling Thursday in favour of an indigenous group that has been fighting for justice since the Kenyan government forced them off their land in the 1970s to create a tourist-drawing game reserve.
The decision by the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights establishes two key international law precedents, according to the London-based Canadian lawyer who argued on behalf of the impoverished Endorois community.
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