Rwanda: The UN and NGOs – Is State Sovereignty under attack? Part II

By Felicien Mwumvaneza

It has been said, “If you do not ask the right questions, every answer seems wrong.” And I would add; when one’s motives are wrong, one’s behaviour towards others, however offensive and shameful, always seems or is assumed to be right to oneself.

There is probably no better way to describe the deliberate onslaught by some human rights organisations and mainstream media against Rwanda especially in the run up to the August 2010 presidential election to the post-election coverage, and recently, the draft UN mapping exercise report on the DR Congo.

The untold story
Even from among Rwanda’s most vocal critics, very few dispute that Rwanda’s intervention in the DR Congo in October 1996 was in accordance with international law regarding the obligation to act in self-defense. In the same vein, the conduct of the Rwandan military in the DRC operation is well known.

It is on record how the Rwandan forces bravely acted to create safe corridors to free approximately 2,000,000 refugees taken hostage by the ex-FAR, militias and genocide perpetrators in refugee camps then turned UN-supported military recruitment, training and arming bases.

The facts about how the Rwandan military successfully repatriated millions of refugees, whilst the fighters in camps used them as human shields, are also indisputable.

Yet, Rwanda’s ‘altruist’ rights advocates and ‘experts’ will not tell the principal elements of the entire story. They will not talk about the failure of the UN Security Council to protect innocent civilians killed in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis, the starting of which ended the prospects of a peaceful end to the conflict that had been painstakingly negotiated in Arusha, Tanzania.

They will not talk about how the Rwanda Patriotic Army which at the time singlehandedly fought to stop the genocide, saved lives and arrested hundreds of thousands of killers to await trial, even where they were arrested while in action. They do not want the world to know that there were isolated cases where some Rwandan military officers or men were involved in certain crimes during the war and that these were actually prosecuted and indeed sentenced for those crimes, simply because Rwanda and its armed forces do not condone violence and crime.

They will not mention the complicity of the Security Council in authorising France to intervene in western Rwanda – a mission that to all intents and purposes enabled the genocide perpetrators to flee justice and helped to direct millions of refugees to leave the country.

They will not want to talk about the UN’s failure to meet its international obligations regarding the handling of refugees on borders and their disarmament. They would prefer to conceal the moral and legal failures for which the UN ought to be prosecuted in the first place.

It is those same refugees whom the UN now struggles to mislead the world that the Rwandan army may have committed crimes against including a possible genocide. By ignoring not only the facts but also the context of the whole situation, the United Nations decided to collaborate exclusively with non-state actors especially those who constantly attack Rwanda’s domestic policy.

There is enough evidence to suggest that the authors of the UN mapping exercise report on the DRC may have worked with Amnesty International and other such groups and their trademark practice of using facts selectively in their work on Rwanda is beginning to emerge.

The arbitrary action of the LDGL rights group in forwarding a ‘damning report’ to the UN Human Rights Council without the consent of some of its core member organisations is a case in point, although this is just the tip of the iceberg.

And now the ‘benevolent’ advocates of Rwanda with ‘extensive expertise’ on the country for 2, 4, 7, 10 or so years – depending on how they prefer to expand (or inflate?) and justify their CVs, are weighing in with an assessment of the impact of their ‘good work’ on Rwanda.

They are now suggesting to the world that the legitimacy of the Rwandan government has been undermined. Now, back in high school, this would be typical of what we used to call “dancing to your own tunes,” and it is similar to an even richer phrase in my native language, “kwikirigita ugaseka.”

Questioning legitimacy: ‘experts’ or the electorate?
Regardless of the nature of the facts about each issue raised by the critics whether in good faith or just out of ignorance; in spite of the official position as well as established practice of the government and its institutions, Rwanda’s detractors have sought to highhandedly question the country’s electoral system, it’s constitutional provisions on multiparty politics and some of its official laws particularly the genocide ideology and sectarianism laws.

Since these so-called non-governmental human rights organisations and mainstream media are not always as clever as they probably think they are or would want the selected victims of their attacks and their other audiences to believe, they are now openly, and of course maliciously, questioning the legitimacy of the Rwandan government. Thus, they cannot hide their true motives long enough; they betray their presumed subtlety.

For months they have fought tooth and nail to misrepresent the country and they are now suggesting or rather wishing that Rwanda’s and President Paul Kagame’s legitimacy has somehow been undermined – never mind the fact that his popular approval was overwhelmingly renewed in the general elections less than two months ago.

What kind of short memory could that possibly be? Yet one would have expected that the obligation to link conclusions to credible premises – effect to cause, is the basic principle of literacy in any culture and civilisation.

Even as Rwandans themselves know it would perhaps be good for Hollywood amateurs, the critics believe that the image of their fictional version of realities in and about Rwanda has been painted vividly enough and presented to the unsuspecting world audience, and that that image should now be sold to major western capitals that have important development cooperation with Rwanda.

Well, with no intentions to disappoint the united detractors of Rwanda in their agenda, it is my opinion that President Kagame’s legitimacy as well as that of his government cannot just be wished away. In addition to renewed popular legitimacy, he and his government also enjoy procedural legitimacy due to strict adherence to the rule of law, high level of accountability and reputation for zero tolerance on corruption that has led to a negligible level of corruption of the corrupt according to Transparency International.

Moreover, and perhaps the most important aspect of all, President Paul Kagame and his government enjoy a high degree of substantive legitimacy and credibility. From incredible reconstruction to the steady path of sustainable growth and socio-economic development, his government’s record of delivery on all policy fronts is something for which no expert is needed to explain.

It is an exciting turn that has caught the keen attention of the wider world. It is an approach with innovative approaches of social change in a complex post-genocide setting in which the homogeneity of the nation has been a challenge never before witnessed anywhere in history.

Rwandans are in no competition with anyone and nobody should feel challenged or threatened by their modest and innovative ways of advancing their society. Other than pouring out unwarranted criticism, serious experts ought to give honest criticism and feedback about the country, and serious researchers might soon need to use the Rwandan experience to update some of the development models.

As for the united detractors of Rwanda, it appears that they can only ignore the country’s history and context – past and present, if they are seeking pretexts for pursuing unspecified interests.

The author is a Graduate student of International Development, Wageningen University – The Netherlands

© The New Times, Rwanda



UN report on Rwanda genocide threatens stability in Central Africa

By Harry Verhoeven / September 23, 2010


Until recently, President Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) were the international community’s aid darling, heralded for their role in stopping the 1994 genocide that claimed the lives of as many as one million Rwandans. They now stand accused of a long list of crimes.

A recently-leaked UN report accuses the RPF of atrocities “that could be classified as genocide” in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 1996-1997 – mass murdering tens of thousands of Hutu refugees. The regime’s legitimacy and its leaders’ individual criminal responsibility are now being contested.

But how wise is it to swap one set of dangerous simplifications for another? Is Rwanda the model of progress and reconciliation, or is Kagame’s RPF the genocidal eye of Central African storms? And what does this tell us about international intervention in a region with an immensely troubled past?

Historical context

Rwanda has long suffered from powerful imagery projected onto it by self-declared friends of the country. The analyses of socio-political trends often reveal more about the “expert” expounding his truths than about what actually happens to Rwanda’s people.

A century ago, Belgian colonialists, biased by the Flemish-Walloon cleavage that undermined nation-statehood back home, portrayed the complex Hutu-Tutsi relationship as fundamentally irreconcilable, mixing racist theories with political expediency.

During the cold war, the regime of Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana was the “enfant chéri” of development practitioners, the Catholic Church, and French President François Mitterrand. A 20-year dictatorship was deemed “a peaceful outpost” in the “dangerous” African jungle. When Mr. Habyarimana was assassinated on April 6, 1994, the regime’s core members unleashed a genocidal hell against Tutsis and some moderate Hutus.

Habyarimana’s old allies disbelievingly went into shock (Brussels) and continued support for the Hutu extremists through denial (Paris). Seeing their illusions go up in smoke was something Belgium and France handled with great difficulty, but with terrible consequences for Rwandans themselves.

Turning a blind eye

When Kagame and his predominantly Tutsi rebels took over, ending the 1994 bloodshed, a new generation fell in love with Rwanda. Anglo-Saxon politicians and aid workers combined geopolitical opportunism with genuine admiration for the RPF’s sophisticated security and good governance buzz.

Apparently willing to ignore the reprisal atrocities perpetrated by RPF forces against civilians across the country between 1995 and 1998, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair have publicly led the defense of Kagame’s team as visionary reconciliators.

The unwillingness of outside actors to critically examine their wishful thinking about Rwanda has historically proved embarrassing. But it’s also led to terrible mistakes, including the inability to prevent the genocide that killed at least 800,000 people.

However, the problem is not just that Rwanda has been imagined as a non-existent African Shangri-La. It’s also that some armchair critics have often gone so over the top in demonizing the RPF – seldom based on any thorough, on-the-ground research – that the movement handily dismisses essentially legitimate concerns as baseless accusations. One Rwandan diplomat called the leaked UN report “an amateurish NGO job.”

Blaming Kagame

It was once mandatory to demand “empathy” for the war-ravaged country’s authoritarian government. Today it is becoming fashionable among some to blame the regime – and Kagame himself – for almost all Central Africa’s wrongs. Desiring to denounce the RPF as the brilliantly evil organization “you love to hate,” too many commentators are now recklessly amalgamating charges of human rights violations, corruption, and bad policy.

Some are coming dangerously close to embracing revisionism about the 1994 crimes, too.

The conventional and well-documented account of the genocide is that government forces, extremist militias, and ordinary Hutus murdered at least 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu Rwandans in less than 100 days, following the assassination of “their” president, Habyarimana. An entire propaganda machine and a brutally crafted extermination ideology fuelled the massacres in churches, schools, and homes.

Dangers of a "double genocide" theory

Today, the idea of a “double genocide” is gaining strength, suggesting that the madness of 1994 was less a one-sided ethnic cleansing of Tutsis, but part of a long and vicious fight between Hutus and Tutsis that became “uncontrollable.” Unfortunately, and shamefully, it is no longer just Hutu génocidaires and their French silent accomplices who suggest the “double genocide” hypothesis, conveniently trivializing two decades of anti-Tutsi massacres.

Former NATO secretary-general Willy Claes was the Belgian Foreign Minister in 1994, and driving force behind the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers from Rwanda during the genocide. He recently called Kagame co-responsible for the extermination of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans. Numerous journalists, scholars, and activists are now jumping on the new UN report’s controversial hypotheses, claiming it offers supreme evidence of the culpability of a regime they loathe (for doctrinal or fashionable reasons).

Some even go so far as to theorize: If the RPF waged an extermination campaign in DRC in 1996-1997, then perhaps it also co-engineered the 1994 events so that it could take over power?

The real need to hold people accountable for what happened to the 200,000 Hutu refugees in the DRC during that time is at risk of being merged with the problematic agendas of genocide revisionists and not particularly innocent RPF detractors.

UN failures

Debate over the technicalities of genocide seldom leads to concrete improvements on the ground. For example: The counterproductive debate about genocide in Darfur did little or nothing to end impunity and increase accountability in the Sudanese region. The risk is particularly acute because the report’s author, the UN, has not done a particularly good job of owning up to its own catastrophic failures in Central Africa.
This includes its shameful role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, but also its shocking inability to neutralize tens of thousands heavily-armed génocidaires in the very refugee camps where it alleges the RPF massacred civilians. The UN would have far more moral credibility and political leverage to finally do something about the DRC atrocities if it had done its utmost to solve the deadly embrace between Eastern Congo and Rwanda during the past 16 years.

Unfortunately, the international community has yet to fully accept the devastating responsibility of Security Council members in this ongoing tragedy.

A treacherous time for Rwanda

Moreover, the debate is re-ignited at a treacherous time for Rwanda. Despite the semblance of a secure hold on power due to Kagame winning an impressive, and controversial, 93 percent of the vote in the last presidential election, tensions are rife in the Rwandan capital, Kigali.

The RPF leadership remains an ultra-professional, but deeply paranoid, military organization, not an ordinary political party. Formal institutions collide with the informal logic of a leadership that thinks like a guerilla movement, in uncompromising terms. The RPF’s security-obsessed hardcore has disintegrated rapidly in recent years. The rivalry problem between Kagame and his former lieutenants (Kayumba Nyamwasa and Patrick Karegyeya) is not about policy but power. Politics in the (increasingly fragmented) RPF is more than ever based on “nobody trusts nobody” anymore.

The Kagame regime, both internally and externally, sees its legitimacy to rule as inextricably tied to having ended the 1994 “genocide.” Standing accused of the most heinous of crimes is more than a diplomatic insult. It’s questioning the regime’s right to rule.

Consequences for Central African stability

The RPF core will react the way it has learned to respond to such threats – by going on the offensive. (Withdrawing its blue-helmets from the Darfur peacekeeping force, as the RPF has threatened to do? Stirring up trouble in Eastern Congo to show it’s indispensable as a force for stability there?) At best, it will offer temporary tactical concessions through on-and-off negotiations.

Ultimately, the RPF will consider itself vindicated in its initial distrust of the outside world, shutting down avenues of mutual listening and further squashing internal dissent.

The inconvenient truth is this: With its genocide reference, this perhaps well-intended report will probably be counter-productive to justice and stability in Central Africa. It was written at a terribly sensitive moment, by an organization that is in no position to lecture Rwanda about accepting responsibility.

The chances of the leaked document leading to increased accountability for crimes in DRC of RPF officials seem nil. Calling the atrocities “genocidal” spices up the debate, but doesn’t further the cause of peaceful politics inside Kigali, and doesn’t necessarily bring justice any closer for eastern Congo massacres.

Harry Verhoeven is a doctoral student at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. He heads the Oxford University China-Africa Network (OUCAN) is co-authoring a research project on the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, “Point of No Return. Kabila, the Rwandan Patriotic Front and the Internal Dynamics of the Great African War.”

@ Christian Science Monitor

African Union to protest UN report in New York

Report from Rwanda News Agency by RNA Reporter
Sunday, 19 September 2010; 12:44:

(Kigali) - The African Union is tipped to use the 65th Session of the United Nations General Assembly to force amendments on the report that accuses Rwanda of alleged Genocide in DR Congo.

The session that gets under way on Monday in New York has been rocked by the leaking of the report linking Rwanda troops to genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The UN was left with egg on its face after the contents of the 600-page draft report was leaked, prompting the secretary-general Ban Ki-moon to fly to Rwanda to ease tensions.

Former and current diplomats told the Kenyan newspaper ‘Sunday Nation’ that the African Union will seek changes to the document as a show of solidarity with Rwanda which has become a major player on the continent.

Another former ambassador and now university don, Prof Frank Matanga, says the leak has exposed the  and left it with no option but to cause the amendments as demanded by Rwanda.

The recognition of Rwanda’s growing importance in African affairs, Prof Kikaya added, should provide a good starting point to mobilise the AU block to demand tighter structures to forestall any future leaks.

“The burden is on Rwanda’s diplomatic corps to lobby the African caucus to give its position on this matter,” he told the Kenyan daily.

Rwanda’s growing importance in the continent since the genocide in 1994 can be seen in its peace efforts in the region.

It currently has 3300 peacekeeping force and 86 police serving with a joint UN and African Union force (Unamid) in the troubled western Sudanese region of Darfur. It is led by Rwandan Lt Gen Patrick Nyamyumba.

Another 256 troops serve with the UN Mission in Sudan (Unmis), which is supporting the implementation of a peace deal between north and south.

“Rwanda was the first country to send troops to a very treacherous place to monitor implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. It therefore pioneered the African-based force,” Prof Kikaya pointed out.

Instead of bashing Rwanda, the UN should be thanking the country for evolving African-based peace keeping in the continent, added Prof Kikaya.

The fact that the report also names Uganda, Zimbabwe, Angola and Burundi, it creates sympathy among other African leaders to fall behind their colleagues, according to diplomats.

President Kagame will also meet with UN Secretary General Ban ki-moon and other top UN officials as part of Rwanda’s offensive against the report due to be released on October 01.

Rwanda, the UN and NGOs: Is State Sovereignty under attack?

By Felicien Mwumvaneza

The process of globalisation with associated spread in communication technologies has ubiquitously changed and shifted the ways in which states and non-state entities function.

It is no longer easy for states, albeit not impossible, to control a massive amount of information that goes around in print, on airwaves and through the internet, especially when the ideas circulated are highly erroneous and evidently detrimental to the character and interests of the concerned state or person. However, there is a level beyond which what goes on in the media and NGO world cannot be considered merely as business as usual.

Well, Rwanda has seen and had its unfair share because of this unique turn in modern times. The country has received a barrage of criticism in recent times especially from her perennial critics such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders.

Some in the mainstream media too have found something newsworthy, telegenic and photogenic, although their criticisms are often contradictory and based on inaccurate claims.

Moreover, since these organisations seem to be answerable to nobody, issues of credibility and morality regarding the methods and quality of their work are not something they would lose sleep over. It would be fine if they just didn’t care about reputation and ethical principles in their own right, but it raises serious questions when it come to how their work is recognised within inter-governmental organisations such as the United Nations.

While this trend is neither new nor surprising, the United Nation’s links to this kind of behaviour is a sad chapter in the history of the world body. It is one thing for non-state actors to make all sorts reckless allegations against a state, just at whim, but it is quite another when the UN makes unsubstantiated and dangerous claims against some of its independent and sovereign member states.

Unanswered questions
When you read the draft UN report on the DRC that was leaked to the press nearly two weeks ago and Amnesty International’s report entitled Rwandese-controlled eastern DRC: Devastating human toll published on June 19, 2001, you hardly find any difference between the two reports. They are similar both in content and the allegations made and even in the format used, the major difference being in the volume and scope of the two reports.

In fact, you may think the UN draft report is just a new edition of the aforementioned and other reports by Amnesty International. The authors of the leaked UN inconclusive report did not make any efforts to ensure that the readers don’t conclude that the UN report either was co-authored with Amnesty International or at least largely drew its content from the organisation’s various reports and those of its partner organisations in the region.

Given that the data collection methodology of the report is far from empirical, its content highly controversial and the circumstances surrounding its leak to the press extremely questionable, the UN should appreciate that comments and criticisms of its actions in this case are legitimate and not meant in an offensive spirit.

The underhand methods in the whole process of compiling the report that mostly, if not exclusively, involved NGOs, serves to undermine the UN’s credibility. For the UN to accord NGOs political acceptance (and in the DRC case, political and credibility pre-eminence) over state actors is an absurd thing to do and might jeopardise the foundational principles of the United Nations and further damage its already poor record particularly in Rwanda and the DRC.

The UN relied on accounts from hundreds of NGOs and individuals who they claim are victims of the alleged human rights abuses in the DRC, whether or not they include those who are still running away from justice back in Rwanda is to them not an issue.

Can one even assume that the UN is not aware that these non-governmental organisations represent a wide spectrum of political views in the conflict-ridden region? How could the UN neglect its primary duty to respect the normal verification procedures of determining the accuracy and reliability of the massive information from non-state actors against member states, by giving governments concerned an opportunity to provide their own account?

How can the UN justify its impartiality and lack of political bias when the decision to allow governments to comment on the leaked report at all was only ad hoc, apparently largely due to Rwanda’s warning that it would withdraw its troops from UN peacekeeping operations, if the report was published in the form in which it was leaked?

The statements from New York and indeed from Mr. Ban Ki Moon himself, while on his recent impromptu visit to Kigali, have made it clear that concerned governments’ comments will be published “alongside the report itself on 1 October, if they so wish.” How does the UN expect Rwanda and other concerned governments to be as naive and credulous as to be content with the offer to publish their comments only in annex form? If the UN had genuine commitment to get it right at this stage, it would have sent a clear message to its concerned member states that their comments would be used to reconsider the substantive content of the draft report itself.

If Mr. Ban is indeed disappointed that the report by the organisation he heads as chief diplomat was leaked, why hasn’t he shown the initiative and willingness to propose that the UN launch an investigation to find out who was behind the leak and what the motive was?

In all of these cases, therefore, the UN has once again missed the opportunity to demonstrate expected neutral judgement. While it may be a normal bureaucratic and diplomatic game at the United Nations, it carries serious national security and indeed existential threats for Rwanda and it is the kind of game, which I hope, the Rwandan government cannot and should not be prepared to tolerate.

Ban Ki-Moon Visits Rwanda

THE United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, arrived in the country yesterday on an impromptu visit aimed at discussing with the Rwandan government the controversial leaked draft UN report alleging that Rwandan troops could have committed human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).


The report titled “Democratic Republic of the Congo Human Rights Mapping” compiled by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, has been dismissed by Rwanda as “malicious and threatened to withdraw its peacekeeping troops from Sudan.

According to th Government Spokesperson and Minister of Foreign Affairs Louise Mushikiwabo, Ki-moon is expected to hold talks this morning with President Paul Kagame over the report which has also been condemned by both the DRC and Uganda.

“The Secretary General decided to visit Kigali to speak directly with the Rwandan President and other government officials about their concern regarding the Democratic Republic of the Congo Human Rights mapping report compiled by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.” Mushikiwabo said in statement to the media.

The UN Chief was accompanied by Roger Meece, the UN Special Representative for DR Congo, Alain Le Roy, the UN Under-Secretary General for peacekeeping operations as well as Ivan Simonovic, the Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights.
The UN last week delayed publication of the report which was supposed to be published on September 2 to October 1 to give Rwanda and the other nations mentioned in the report more time to submit their views.

Last week, the Government of Rwanda announced that it was ready to withdraw over 3,500 troops serving under the UNAMID/UNAMIS peacekeeping missions in Sudan, with Mushikiwabo arguing that an army that is preventing a possible Genocide in Darfur cannot be accused of doing the same somewhere else.

Courtesy of the New Times