Rwanda: Ten Years Later
Genocide Survivors Still Face an Uncertain Future
By Beatriz Pavon, for the Chronicle
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| A UN peacekeeping soldier from Canada distributes water to a displaced boy at a way-station set up to assist Rwandans returning from Zaire, near the border town of Gisenyi. |
Ten years after the Rwandan genocide in which as many as 800,000 people lost their lives, survivors of the massacre face an uncertain future due to insufficient foreign aid and a lack of judicial redress.
Several aid programmes in Rwanda are struggling to meet the needs of survivors who, according to a 1998 survey by the Rwandan Government, total roughly half the country’s population. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) helps survivors reconnect with their families and finances the education of around 2,000 children. In addition, several United Nations agencies, such as the UN Development Fund for Women, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Development Programme, have increased the Rwandan Government’s ability to fund women’s micro-finance projects, enabling them to earn independent income. The Government is also involved, through the Fund to Assist Survivors of the Genocide, in financing school fees and medical care, while victims’ associations offer counselling, organized mourning and testimony collection.
Despite aid programmes at work in the country, many survivors and their advocates believe relief attempts have not met victims’ needs, as the majority of them still live in critical conditions, coping with poverty, illness and social isolation. Alison Des Forges, Senior Advisor in the African Division of Human Rights Watch, notes that victims have “received very little concrete assistance” because, given the number of victims and the current funding levels, “there is simply not enough to take care of everyone’s needs”. Further, Rakiya Omaar, Director of African Rights, explains that aid programmes often only deal with one aspect of recovery, thus failing “to account for the totality of the individual or the group in need”.
Beyond the shortage of meaningful assistance, Rwandans are also rebuilding their justice system to manage the 100,000 persons who participated in the 1994 killings and stand accused of related crimes. At the request of the Rwandan Government, the UN Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, United Republic of Tanzania, to prosecute the alleged architects of the killings. At the beginning of its mandate, genocide survivors and victims’ families knew little about ICTR. However, according to Ms. Des Forges, Rwandans have become more “satisfied [with the ICTR] as they see progress being made”. To date, the Tribunal has completed nine cases, while eleven are on appeal. At the request of the Security Council, ICTR will attempt to complete its regular proceedings by 2008 and all appeals by 2010, meaning local redress is needed to bring remaining criminals to justice.
As Rwanda’s judicial system was nearly obsolete after the genocide, its reconstruction has been slow. According to the 2000 report of the Special Representative of the UN Commission on Human Rights on the situation in Rwanda, approximately 123,000 detainees were crowded in jails and communal detention centres. To clear the overcrowded prisons, the Government in 2001 set up a system of local tribunals, known as Gacaca, to try detainees whose involvement in the killings was considered less serious than that of the central planners. Under Gacaca, communities were encouraged to talk openly about the genocide in a victim-focused process, but because of limited community involvement, the tribunals have had limited success.
“Restitutive” justice, which often includes financial compensation, rehabilitation, restitution of loss and guarantees of non-repetition to survivors, has become another contentious element of the international criminal justice process. Currently, such demands have yet to be addressed in international or national court proceedings. According to Adama Dieng, Registrar of the ICTR, the Tribunal “was not intended to address the issue of welfare of the victims of genocide”. However, by prosecuting the genocide’s masterminds, the ICTR expects “to contribute to the national reconciliation process in Rwanda”. Placide Kalisa, Chairman of the Rwandan survivors’ organization IBUKA, explains that there has been “no recognition of the acuteness of survivors’ problems and therefore no specific programmes or protection laws tailored for them [victims]”.
Overall, continuing international support is needed to ensure that sufficient foreign aid accompanies relief efforts on the ground, and judicial redress remains a priority. The United Nations has acknowledged its responsibility to help survivors still struggling with physical and psychological scars, as Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated at the March 2004 Memorial Conference on the Rwanda Genocide: “We cannot undo the past. But we can help Rwandans, especially the young generation who are the future of the country, build a new society together.” A month later, at the International Day of Reflection of the Victims of the Rwandan Genocide, Mr. Annan addressed the need to support the Government, non-governmental organizations and victims’ associations, and to encourage greater global awareness to consider “what more we can do to help Rwanda and her people to recover from an unimaginable trauma”.
Another obstacle facing Rwanda is the marginalization of females as a result of the killings ten years ago. Estimates reveal that during the violence, 250,000 to 500,000 Rwandan women were sexually abused, often contracting diseases such as HIV/AIDS; in addition, 50 per cent lost their husbands. Many Rwandan widows and carriers of sexually transmitted diseases have been largely ostracized from their communities. According to them, their most urgent needs include aid to rebuild homes, food and basic health care. Ms. Omaar explains that the “single biggest concern” for widows now managing their families alone “is to have a house so they can leave it to their children when they die”. Another problem for women who were raped and are now HIV-positive is obtaining medication, sufficient food and regular check-ups to monitor possible side-effects. For the majority of females, such requirements to treat HIV are too costly and largely unavailable. These women, who are continuing to hold marginal positions in their communities and without their basic needs met, are “condemned to live a life of solitude”, she says.
According to UNICEF, the 1994 genocide left 95,000 children orphaned. While international organizations and the Rwandan Government are attempting to provide them with social services such as health care and education, serious gaps exist. As one orphan explained, children commonly lack the bus fare to travel to the government office to receive aid for school fees and medicine. Sara Rakita of Human Rights Watch believes “these children … have seen the worst of humanity, have too big of a burden, and it is too much for a child on his own to deal with the needed arrangements to get assistance”.
While the ICRC has reunited 70,545 Rwandan children with families since 1994, the country currently has one of the world’s largest proportions of child-headed households, with almost 100,000 living in children-run homes. Many orphans continue to live with siblings on family land without adult supervision because their parents were killed in the genocide, died from AIDS or have been imprisoned for genocide-related crimes. As children continue to struggle with their losses, Alexandra Yuster, UNICEF Senior Advisor of Child Protection, believes the most important measure for them is to find ways to remember the genocide and address the trauma they experienced, so that “nothing like this can ever happen again”. |
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Local Rwandan organizations working with survivors after the 1994 genocide are:
IBUKA: In Kinyarwanda, it means “remember you”. This non-profit organization supports genocide victims through counselling, organized mourning, memory preservation and testimony collection. IBUKA is currently creating a database of victims, survivors and perpetrators of the genocide.
Avega-Agahozo: AVEGA is the French acronym for “Widows of the April Genocide”, and agahozo in Kinyarwanda means “to wipe away the tears”. In 1995, fifty women who lost their husbands in the genocide created this non-profit organization to address the needs of widows, parents who lost their children, orphans, the elderly and disabled persons. It has 25,000 members throughout Rwanda.
Rwanda Women’s Network: RWN is a grass-roots initiative that promotes health care for victims of rape and violence, home reconstruction and psychological rehabilitation for survivors.
Sevota: A support group for the widows and orphans of the April 1994 Tutsi massacre in Taba, Sevota facilitated the testimony of women survivors for the ICTR and helps rape victims access medical care.
Abasa: Recently established in the southern region of Butare, this organization attempts to bring widows and victims of sexual abuse together.
The Society for Women and AIDS in Africa: SWAA is a Pan-African organization that has developed programmes dedicated to women and their families in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
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Conspiracy to Murder
The Rwandan Genocide
By Linda Melvern
Published by Verso, 2004
358 pp., ISBN 1-85984-588-6
Reviewed by Beatriz Pavon
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Linda Melvern, a journalist and former consultant to the Military One prosecution team at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, portrays in her latest book entitled Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide one of the most appalling acts in modern history. Published in April 2004 to coincide with the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the 1994 genocide, which caused the death of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, the book attempts to recapitulate the events that took place right before and during the hundred days that followed the plane crash which killed both Presidents Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi.
The author writes of preparations for a “final plan” to eliminate the entire Tutsi race. She describes the long path, beginning in 1959, that preceded the Rwandan genocide, leading to the escalation that culminated in the explosion of violence in 1994, during which the international community failed to act. The book details the participation of political leaders in the training of militia and the stockpiling of machetes and other weapons, and shows how government authorities orchestrated prior to the genocide a racist propaganda campaign that incited the population with misinformation. It also outlines the political decisions reached in the United Nations Security Council, which reduced an already weak contingent of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda led by General Romeo Dallaire of Canada. Melvern explains the reasons behind the policy of non-intervention by the United States and other Western powers in the country.
Conspiracy to Murder is not only an impressive narrative of the genocide based on a wealth of data and testimonies but also a sharp critique of the international community’s failure to stop the killings. It is an extension of Melvern’s previous work, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide, and expands on her research into the ways in which the human rights catastrophe could have been averted. It is a frank condemnation of the world’s broken promise to “never again” allow genocide to happen. Uncovering the inadequate efforts of the nations that had committed themselves after the Second World War to prevent genocide, Conspiracy to Murder shows how this inaction contributed to the loss of human lives and the destruction of an entire generation in Rwanda.
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