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)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)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)A friend recently sent me information regarding the ownership of cattle in the area of Masisi occupied by former CNDP rebels. He said he had gathered information about 7,200 cows in Masisi belonging to high-ranking Rwandan officials.
(...more)The plane crash of April 1994, in which Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana was killed, was the spark that launched the genocide in that country. Ever since, there have been conflicting accusations. Given strong evidence of planning of the genocide that followed, it has been widely accepted that the plane was shot down by Hutu extremists. Aside from its potential role in launching the genocidal campaign, there was the suggestion of dissatisfaction with Habyarimana in certain Rwandan circles because he had agreed not only to power sharing with the Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front but, and probably even more important, he had accepted a right to return of Tutsi refugees. However, some sources, like Belgian academic Filip Reyntjens and French judge Brugière, taking the view that it was Kagame and the Rwandese Patriotic Front that shot down the plane. The argument is often invoked in attempts to suggest that the Rwandan genocide can be reduced to a civil conflict in which both ’sides’ were equally responsible.
The Rwandan government has issued a new report on the assassination, conducted by international experts. It concludes that the shooting down of the plane was carried out by Hutu extremists: http://mutsinzireport.com/ According to what seems to be a very thorough and rigorous study…
(...more)‘I feel bad I killed the child because he was innocent,” the man says softly. “I wanted to tell the court everything so I can be reconciled with his family.” In the shade of an acacia tree, on benches borrowed from a nearby church, Kalisa Surayimani has just been appealing against a life sentence alongside 10 relatives. One of Rwanda’s final gacaca courts – the community trials set up to try those accused of taking part in the country’s 1994 genocide. Between them Kalisa and his family have been convicted of killing more than 100 people.
Established in 2001, gacaca courts represent a unique experiment in collaborative justice. Based on the traditional system for settling local disputes, the judges are “people of integrity” from the community; the trials take place in the open air (named after the grass on which they are held) with survivors and witnesses raising their hands if they want to interject.
When conventional courts buckled under the weight of genocide cases – the government said it would take more than 200 years to hear them all – the gacaca courts began to try the Hutu attackers who took part in the “ethnic cleansing” of the Tutsi minority (in which moderate Hutus were also killed).
(...more)It was cold, misty, and miserably wet the day we visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, but no one wished for better weather. My companions — mostly midlevel diplomats from more than a dozen countries around the world — all seemed to agree that sunshine would have been almost offensive. We had come to this corner of Poland as part of a weeklong seminar on preventing genocide, which included such outings so that the participants could learn more about the details of the Holocaust. And yet, I wondered if this field trip was having its desired effect.
(...more)JOHANNESBURG – For Rwanda, Saturday may come to be seen as the day the tiny central African nation came out of the diplomatic wilderness.
On the very same day that Rwanda was accepted as a member in the club of former British colonies, the Commonwealth of Nations, Rwanda also managed to re-establish diplomatic relations with its long-time arch-nemesis, France, the nation that many Rwandan politicians blame for involvement in the 1994 genocide…
“This is a paradigm shift for both countries [France and Rwanda],” says François Grignon, Africa program director for the International Crisis Group in Nairobi. “I think this reflects Rwanda’s shifting from the instrumentalization of guilt over the genocide toward its aspirations of becoming a Singapore of Africa.”
(...more)KIGALI — Rwanda wants to “clear up the diplomatic climate which has been poisoned since 1994″ with France, the Kigali government said a day after the announcement of the restoration of diplomatic ties.
(...more)Earlier this month the film As We Forgive, a documentary about Rwanda, was released on DVD… It does not chronicle the 1994 genocide, but what has come after: Rwanda’s struggle to rebuild itself…
The filmmaker, Laura Waters Hinson, took an impromptu trip to Rwanda while pursuing a master in filmmaking at American University. She expected to find stories of devastation, and found stories of hope instead. As We Forgive has since been shown in Congress, at the State Department and in dozens of universities, churches and communities nationwide.
(...more)MONTREAL — A Canadian judge has imposed the toughest sentence possible on a man convicted of committing atrocities during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, described as the worst possible crime a human being can commit.
In a historic case, Desire Munyaneza was sentenced Thursday to life imprisonment without possibility of parole for 25 years.
Quebec Superior Court Justice Andre Denis handed down the sentence in a case international legal observers followed closely because of the implications it could have on similar prosecutions both here and abroad.
He is the first person convicted under Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, enacted in 2000.
(...more)Rwanda is a place where the generally accepted and reported narrative is increasingly diverging from the facts on the ground.
(...more)Kigali — In a bid to boost the fight against Child, and Gender Based Violence (CGBV) the Rwanda National Police yesterday rolled out a two- day training exercise to capacitate local leaders in dealing with the vice.
(...more)This week’s arrest of accused Rwandan génocidaire Idelphonse Nizeyimana is the kind of thing that human-rights lawyers dream about…
The perpetrators of the 1994 genocide, in which Hutu extremists slaughtered some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days, are guilty of one of the greatest crimes in the history of humanity. But as the international tribunal where Nizeyimana will be tried prepares to wrap up by the end of 2013, celebrations over his arrest will not ease a long-held sense of discontent about the genocide’s aftermath and whether justice has really been served. For all the big fish it may have landed, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has yet to consider the case of a single person accused of committing atrocities on behalf of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the guerrilla movement led by now President Paul Kagame.
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