Rwanda

Neil Edwards is the volunteer intern for CFR's Africa Program in Washington, DC. He is a master's candidate at the School of International Service at American University and is a returned Peace Corps Rwanda volunteer. President Paul Kagame’s Vision 2020 roadmap for Rwanda has led to remarkable progress with respect to women’s rights. One of the most visible markers is Rwanda’s parliament, which has the world’s highest proportion of women at 61.3 percent—nearly triple the world’s average. Parliament has passed laws on gender-based violence, inheritance, discrimination, and rape. Furthermore, a near-universal healthcare system covers almost 90 percent of the nation, and Rwanda is on pace to become the first nation in the world to eliminate cervical cancer. Almost all Rwandan adolescent girls are vaccinated against it, while in the United States, only four in ten girls are vaccinated. But these great strides in gender equality occur alongside Kagame’s persistent human rights abuses.  In an open letter, former presidential candidate Shima Diane Rwigara calls out Kagame for these abuses. The letter was presumably motivated by the murder of Jean Paul Mwiseneza, a prison guard who was stabbed and beheaded in a Kigali prison on June 10. She writes, “Rwandans experienced enough trauma, anguish and loss during the slaughter of their countrymen and women; the last thing they need is oppression from their liberators. I humbly ask: what to do when those designated to protect are the ones persecuting?”   Rwigara has been a fierce public critic of President Kagame, targeting the regime’s human rights record, weak rule of law, and restrictions on freedoms of expression. She has faced the wrath of the Kagame regime first hand. During her 2017 bid for president, naked photos of Rwigara were leaked to the media. Soon after, she and her family were arrested for tax evasion and inciting an insurrection, and she spent over a year in prison facing those likely spurious charges. Similarly, Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, another female presidential candidate, was arrested and served eight years of a fifteen year sentence on charges of terrorism and threatening national security. These charges are also widely understood to have been ginned-up for political purposes.    President Kagame often cites Rwanda’s progress on gender representation, access to health care, and improved development statistics to mask his human rights abuses. In an interview with France 24, Kagame was asked about presidential candidates, journalists, and human rights defenders being jailed, physically attacked, killed, silenced, or even forced into exile. Kagame dismissed these allegations entirely, claiming it as “just ridiculous.” He pivoted to Rwanda’s development, saying “what we are talking about in terms of development, these are human rights: development, schools, education, health, and food security. The level of poverty has decreased by 60 percent.” But one does not justify the other.  Still, Kagame’s regular appearances in the international spotlight reflect his successful self-promotion. Kagame makes appearances at NBA basketball games and regularly in international media. He has built a global image as a war hero who rebuilt the nation after he led an army to stop the 1994 genocide. Casual viewers of his interviews and public appearances may not be aware of his regime’s political repression.  Kagame is now serving his third term as president, and after changing the constitution in 2015, he now has the ability to rule until 2034. The president’s clampdown on political freedoms dampened checks on his power. Political activism and a truly independent civil society are almost non-existent for fears of prosecution. According to Rwigara, certain “organizations…which are responsible for seeking justice for survivors—are too afraid to stand up to the ruling party.” Despite Rwanda’s world-leading representation of women in parliament—and its likely positive impact on policy—the legislature is not able to check Kagame’s political repression. Instead, parliament is complicit in the adoption of policies that compromise Rwandans’ civil liberties. Members of parliament—both male and female—are necessarily loyal to the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front party, rather than owing their full allegiance to their constituents who elected them. Amidst the democratic backsliding occurring across Sub-Saharan Africa, policymakers must applaud social progress, but continue to remain vigilant to ongoing human rights abuses. 

Test your knowledge of Rwanda, from its colonial history to the aftermath of its genocide.

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering January 12 to January 19, was compiled with support from Rebecca Turkington and Rebecca Hughes.

President Paul Kagame, along with many other chiefs of state, will be visiting New York for the opening week of the United Nations General Assembly. President Trump is scheduled to host African heads of state, including Kagame, for a dinner. For Africans and others, Kagame is somewhat of a paradox. He has been an intelligence operative, a warlord, and, following the Rwandan genocide, a vice president and president. He and his government have pursued policies that have led to a remarkable transformation of Rwanda from “a Third world backwater into a prospective middle-income country.” Conversely, his intervention in the Congo has fostered civil war, he has little toleration for domestic political opposition, and there are credible allegations that he intimidates his opponents and, in some cases, has them assassinated. For example, in the recently concluded Rwandan elections, opposition candidates complained of harassment and intimidation by the security services. One candidate, Diane Shima Rwigara, has claimed continued harassment even after the election, along with her family, on charges of forging signatures and tax evasion.  Obadiah Mailafia, a deputy governor of the Nigeria Central Bank and chief of staff of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States, explores the Kagame paradox in an article he wrote for a Nigerian newspaper. It is well worth reading, and provides an important African perspective on the leader of Rwanda. He opens his balanced treatment of Kagame by quoting Kenyan political scientists Ali Mazrui’s characterization of Ghana’s liberation leader Kwame Nkrumah as a “Leninist Tsar,” and using it to sum-up the Kagame paradox. Kagame is also sometimes compared to Lee Kuan Yew, who transformed Singapore into a first-world country through authoritarian, non-democratic means over his three decades in power. Kagame’s methods, however, are cruder than Lee’s. It also remains to be seen whether Kagame’s transformation can last, or whether there will be a renewed round of ethnic conflict.   For many foreign observers, there is much to be said for Kagame and Lee, and the current dysfunctionality of governance in Washington makes attractive an authoritarian style of government that “gets things done,” and “solves problems.” A difficulty, however, is that democratic states have a long history of self-correction; authoritarian states do not.   

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering from May 6 to May 12, was compiled with support from Becky Allen, Anne Connell, and Loren Grier. Boko Haram releases kidnapped girls in Nigeria On Sunday, the Nigeria-based extremist group Boko Haram released eighty-two schoolgirls who had been kidnapped and held captive for three years. In a deal negotiated by the Nigerian government in collaboration with the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Swiss government, the girls were set free in exchange for the release of five top Boko Haram commanders. The freed girls numbered among the 276 female students kidnapped by Boko Haram militants from a boarding school in Chibok, Nigeria in 2014, which sparked an international movement and the #BringBackOurGirls social media campaign. The Nigerian government is engaged in ongoing talks to secure the release of the remaining 113 girls from Boko Haram camps in exchange for additional captured militants. The released girls have faced significant barriers to full reintegration into society, though the Nigerian government reportedly seeks to aid their transition by placing them in government-run care facilities to receive medical treatment and education.  Female political leadership in Rwanda Diane Rwigara, a leading Rwandan business woman and advocate for women’s economic advancement, announced this week that she will challenge sitting President Paul Kagame in the upcoming August election. Rwigara’s platform is focused on reducing income inequality and extreme poverty, encouraging youth employment, and championing a free press. She and other candidates face an uphill battle amidst President Kagame’s efforts to consolidate power in recent years. Rwigara would become the second woman in history to compete for the presidency in a nation that has seen tremendous gains in women’s political participation since the 1990s: Rwanda boasts the highest percentage of female parliamentarians of any nation in the world, with women now holding  61 percent of seats in the lower house of parliament, far surpassing the 30 percent quota enacted in the country’s new constitution. Prosecution of sexual violence in India This week, the Bombay high court upheld life sentences for eleven men found guilty in a high-profile gang rape, thereby ending a fifteen-year legal battle. The 2002 rape of Bilkis Bano occurred during the Gujarat riots, a spate of violence targeting Muslims; Bano was attempting to flee the violence when she was caught and brutally assaulted by men she had known since childhood. Although Bano reported the crime and could cite her attackers by name, local law enforcement and medical personnel ignored her initial report of the case, intimidated her, and allegedly destroyed relevant evidence. Five of those policemen and two of the doctors, who had earlier been cleared by the trial court, were also convicted by the high court this week. Bano’s case is hardly unique in India, where an estimated fifty-seven women are reportedly raped every day. Many of India’s reported sexual violence cases, however, never make it to court, and only 26 percent of those that do result in a conviction.    

Emerging Voices features contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article is from Amit Chandra, an emergency physician and global health consultant based in Washington, DC. This year marks the end of the fifteen-year Millennium Development Goal (MDG) framework. The health MDGs focused on single, discrete issues including hunger, maternal and child health, and major infectious diseases, and they successfully targeted the spread of HIV and tuberculosis. Slated to replace the MDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) similarly focus on single issues—hunger, sanitation, and an expanded list of key diseases. Continuing this approach fails to address today’s global health challenges, in particular rising mortality associated with non-communicable diseases (NCDs), road traffic accidents, and Ebola-like infectious disease epidemics. To combat these threats, we need to strengthen countries’ entire health systems, specifically incorporate data to identify problems, expand technical capacity, and boost financial and human resources for health. In many developing countries, health systems now face the dual burden of NCDs and persistently high rates of infectious diseases like HIV, TB, malaria, and tropical diseases. Studies estimate that over 900 million people in developing countries have high blood pressure, though only one third of them (300 million) are aware of their disease, and only one third of those aware (100 million) are currently on treatment. Unlike with most infectious diseases, people can live for years with high blood pressure, diabetes, or early stages of cancer without symptoms. Many in the developing world lack access to primary care, and so their first contact with a doctor may only occur when their conditions escalate. In this way, weak health systems turn  preventable and treatable chronic diseases into silent killers. Tackling NCDs requires universal primary health systems that provide prevention, screening, and treatment services to entire populations, not just to the few identified with a particular disease. Health systems also matter for lowering traffic fatalities. Road traffic accidents cause over 1.24 million deaths per year worldwide. In the developing world, an injured person lying on the roadside often depends on bystanders for transport to the nearest hospital, which is unlikely to provide surgical care. A robust health system would enable coordination between health, law enforcement, and public policy leaders to reduce traffic fatalities. Take Rwanda for example. In 2001, the country had one of the highest traffic fatality rates in the world. To address this problem, the government passed mandatory seat belt and helmet laws, increased enforcement of speed limits, and implemented a public awareness campaign. Drivers of motorcycle taxis, a popular method of transport, are even required to carry an extra helmet for their passengers, which they sling over their elbows while looking for customers. As a result, road traffic deaths fell by over 30 percent. On a recent trip to Kigali, I was impressed to see near universal helmet use among motorcycle drivers and passengers. The absence of adequate health systems can permit novel, unexpected infectious disease outbreaks to escalate and spread. The recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa—often cited as an example of the failure of the World Health Organization (WHO)—is first and foremost a failure of the national health systems of the three countries most affected by the disease. Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone’s inability to effectively respond to the initial outbreak led directly to the spread of the disease. Too few hospitals and clinics, a dearth of doctors and nurses, and limited public outreach capacities contributed to a climate of misinformation and a breakdown of public services. Preventing future outbreaks will require more than a WHO emergency fund; it will require national health systems capable of detecting, treating, and isolating a surge of sick and exposed patients. Now, as we determine the scope of the SDGs, we have an opportunity to strengthen health systems. National governments should be encouraged to provide basic health services to their populations. The global health community can support this effort by financing health management training and an expanded health provider workforce. To quote the UN Secretary General’s report on the SDGs, meeting these goals by 2030 will require that we “…act, boldly, vigorously and expeditiously, to turn reality into a life of dignity for all, leaving no one behind.”    

For as long as a generation, parts of the eastern Congo have been hell on earth. The depredations of war lords, militias, and even the Congolese army itself, in a context of the breakdown of government and gangster-like intervention from abroad have made the region nearly unlivable. Eastern Congo has become notorious for the wholesale looting of its vast natural resources and the widespread use of rape for political ends. Under such circumstances, the announcement that a particularly vicious rebel group, M23, would end its rebellion and begin surrendering its weapons can only offer hope in what has long been a hopeless situation. This positive development appears to be the result of some reforms in the Congolese army, international pressure on Rwanda, and a much more aggressive role for the UN peacekeeping force, the world’s largest and most expensive. Human rights and other activists have been advocating this formula for years. Exploring why it has taken so long to implement this strategy would take a book – we might start with Jason Stearns’ Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa. Despite Paul Kagame’s vociferous denials, the Congolese government in Kinshasa has long maintained that Rwandan support for the rebels and warlords has played a key role in the conflict. Kinshasa has called on the international community to bring pressure on Kigali and now it has done so, particularly by cutting aid to Rwanda. There has also been pressure on the Kinshasa government to make reforms. The UN Security Council finally broadened the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force, allowing it to pursue a much more aggressive role, and at least some members of the Congolese army have seen a need for reform, according to the New York Times. M23’s surrender is not the end of eastern Congo’s travails. At best, it is no more than “the end of the beginning” in the effort to provide peace and security to a devastated region. Eastern Congo may be the region of the world that is the most wounded, with some of the worst social statistics in almost every category. Its recovery will require both the attention and the assistance of the international community. If either lapses, M23 is likely to have successors.

This is a guest post by Emily Mellgard, research associate for the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Studies program. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been back in the media over the past few days with the news that the UN mission MONUSCO and the DRC military (FARDC) have succeeded in pushing the M23 rebels out of many of their fortified positions and into the jungles along the border with Rwanda. This current struggle against the M23 rebels (who take their name after the government peace agreement of March 23, 2009, on which they claim the government reneged), is only the most recent of almost continuous exploitation and violence in the region since it came under the Belgian monarchy’s rule in 1885. The violence against women has been particularly horrific. The DRC has been called “the rape capital of the world,” and “the worst place to be a woman.” Hundreds of thousands of women have been sexually harassed and raped. We have blogged previously on some of the attitudes on rape in the DRC and on its use as a weapon of war. One pioneering Congolese gynecologist and surgeon, however, has gained international accolades and domestic heroism for his work with victims of rape in his country. Dr. Denis Mukwege founded the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, near the DRC-Rwanda border in 1999. The hospital specializes in obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics, surgery, and internal medicine. It has treated over 40,000 victims of sexual violence. Dr. Mukwege says: “The perpetrators of these crimes destroy life at its entry point. The women can no longer have children. Often they get infected with AIDS… Their men are humiliated. So the perpetrators destroy the entire social fabric of their enemies, their communities, their future generations, without even killing the woman. A line has been crossed here, which should have been an absolute taboo. But because those parts of the body are not usually visible, it is not as obvious as other forms of mutilation.” After an attempt to assassinate him in October 2012, Dr. Mukwege fled to Europe with his family. He returned however in January 2013 to live full time at the hospital. There was an outpouring of support from fellow Congolese after the attack on him, and local women’s groups promised that they would protect him. They volunteered to guard him around the clock in shifts of twenty women each. For his work among the victims of war and insecurity, Dr. Mukwege was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and has received the UN Human Rights Prize (2008), the Olof Palme Prize (2009), and the King Baudouin International Development Prize (2011). In 2009, the Nigerian newspaper Daily Trust named him “African of the Year.” He received the 2013 Human Rights First Award. And on 15 October, 2013, he received the Civil Courage Prize from the Train Foundation. Dr. Mukwege believes that the DRC needs “a professional, predominantly female, police force and an army that protects its people and excludes those who have destroyed the country.” Should M23 be defeated, building such institutions will be key to ensuring future stability, and the rights of all Congolese, especially women.

Planes crashes have killed a regrettable number of world leaders. Legendary UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld died in 1960 in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) in mysterious circumstances while on his way to negotiate a ceasefire in neighboring Congo. Pakistani president Muhammed Zia-ul-Haq died in 1988 in similarly disputed circumstances. Just two years ago, Polish President Lech Kaczynski  died when his plane crashed attempting to land at a Russian airport in bad weather. But no plane crash involving a world leader has led to the kind of consequences that followed the death of Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994. His death did more than disrupt Rwanda’s day-to-day routine; it ushered in one of the worst genocides of the twentieth century. Habyarimana was returning to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, from Tanzania on the evening of April 6, 1994 with Cyprien Ntaryamira, the president of Burundi. The two had just wrapped up discussions about implementing the Arusha Accords, a deal to end Rwanda’s three-year civil war. The war had fallen largely, but not entirely, along ethnic lines, pitting Hutu, Rwanda’s largest ethnic group, against Tutsi. The two groups shared many similarities, including a common language and many common traditions, and they lived in the same towns and villages. Belgium, the colonial power in Rwanda, had given Tutsis an upper hand in both politics and business, which bred resentment with Hutus. After Rwanda gained independence in 1962, Hutus dominated the government. As part of the Arusha Accords, Habyarimana, who was a Hutu, was set to end his two-decade rule by swearing in a transitional government upon his return. But as his plane neared Kigali’s airport it crashed, landing (oddly enough) on the grounds of the presidential residence. What caused Habyarimana’s plane to crash remains a matter of dispute. The Mutsinzi Report, the product of an investigative commission initiated by the Rwandan government in 2007 and published in 2010, contends that the plane was shot down by surface-to-air missiles launched on the order of members of Habyarimana’s own inner circle. Some initial reports and at least one French judge blamed Paul Kagame, the leader of the opposition Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) forces in 1994 and Rwanda’s current president, for the crash. But a French inquiry recently cleared the Kagame and RPF of responsibility. Regardless of who shot down Habyarimana’s plane, within hours Habyarimana’s presidential guard began to kill leaders of the political opposition and then Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Radio stations broadcast vile propaganda urging on the killings. An unofficial militia called the Interahamwe (“those who attack together”) formed. It had as many as 30,000 at the peak of the genocide. The killings were brutal and personal; many of the victims were killed face-to-face with machetes. The world noticed the genocide from the start. The day after Habyarimana’s plane crashed, President Bill Clinton issued a statement saying that he was “horrified that elements of the Rwandan security forces have sought out and murdered Rwandan officials.” If Habyarimana’s death and the killings of Rwandans weren’t attention-grabbing enough, the world soon learned that Hutu militias had tortured and then murdered ten Belgian soldiers serving on a UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda. The international community did not, however, choose to stand and fight. Belgium quickly withdrew its remaining troops. The UN Security Council soon followed suit, voting unanimously on April 21  to withdraw all but 270 troops. General Roméo Dallaire of Canada, the commander of UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda, was blunt about what he witnessed and failed to stop: Rwanda will never leave me: it’s in the pores of my body. We saw lots of them dying, and lots of those eyes still haunt me—angry eyes, innocent eyes. They’re looking at me with my blue beret, and they’re saying, ’What in the hell happened?’ ... And they’re absolutely right: How come I failed? How come my mission failed?" By this time, just two weeks after Habyarimana’s plane crashed, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Rwandans had already died. If the international community would not save Rwanda, the Tutsi-dominated RPF would. It broke the ceasefire within twenty-four hours of Habyarimana’s death. RPF troops slowly rolled back Hutu forces, finally capturing Kigali on July 4. In the course of three months, as many as 800,000 Rwandans had been killed. The United States consciously declined to intervene in Rwanda. A month after the genocide began, President Clinton signed a directive aimed at limiting U.S. military involvement in peacekeeping operations. Anthony Lake, the national security adviser at the time, explained the policy as recognizing the impossibility of solving every conflict around the world: When I wake up every morning and look at the headlines and the stories and the images on television of these conflicts, I want to work to end every conflict. I want to work to save every child out there. And I know the president does, and I know the American people do. But neither we nor the international community have the resources nor the mandate to do so. So we have to make distinctions. We have to ask the hard questions about where and when we can intervene. And the reality is that we cannot often solve other people’s problems; we can never build their nations for them. Four years after the genocide, President Clinton flew to Kigali to apologize to the survivors, telling them that “we in the United States and the world community did not do as much as we could have and should have done to try to limit what occurred in Rwanda in 1994.” Some experts, like my former colleague Alan Kuperman, argue that even if the United States had intervened in Rwanda that the death toll still would have been enormous. No one will ever know how many lives might have been saved if the international community had acted rather than watched. The horror of the Rwandan genocide helped spur interest in the notion of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the idea that countries have an obligation to intervene to protect people against genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The UN endorsed the R2P concept at the 2005 World Summit, and the UN Security Council reaffirmed the obligation in 2006. As recent events in Darfur, Sudan, and Syria all show, however, the UN and its member states continue to have trouble translating R2P from ideal into reality.