Bahati Ntama Jacques and Beth Tuckey argue Bush's support for Rwanda through the prism of the Global War on Terror and US access to natural resources will in the long run be disastrous to peace in the DRC.

There is a common flaw in US foreign policy. In giving aid to foreign nations, the United States prioritizes its own foreign policy goals over any standards of good governance. Because this system of support ignores the realities on the ground, it ultimately backfires, undermining US long term interests and fueling instability, conflict, and violations of core human rights standards. Nowhere is this more true than in Africa. Today, President Bush supports corrupt, illegitimate regimes that will either cooperate in the Global War on Terror, provide US companies access to much sought-after natural resources, or both. If history is any indication, this infusion of wealth and military training for such self-interested gains is likely to be disastrous for the people of Africa.

A particularly good example of this is Rwanda – a country that has abused its neighboring people in the Democratic Republic of Congo with support from the United States government. President Paul Kagame will host President Bush this week. Will the leader of the most powerful country in the world have the courage to discuss Rwanda’s negative role in peace and economic development in DRC? Will he castigate Rwandan President Kagame for not providing the political space for Hutus to return to Rwanda? Likely, no. He will announce US support for peace in Congo while simultaneously pushing forward a foreign policy that favors only America’s narrow interests.

From 1996-2003, the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo suffered a great deal from two wars that pitted Rwanda and its allies against the Congo. The Congolese loss was other people’s gain. According to Global Policy Forum’s Tito Dragon in DR Congo: Dirt Above Ground, Precious Metal Below, “it was the attempt to control coltan mines that was the principal, if not the only, motivation behind the US-backed 1998 occupation of part of DRC territory by Rwanda and Uganda.” In fact, in 2004, after a three-year investigation, a UN Panel of Experts implicated three major US companies for fueling war in DRC by collaborating with rebel groups trafficking coltan. United States assistance to Rwanda continues today largely due to Kagame’s willingness to be engaged in the US War on Terror; and again, the people of DRC lose.

Though he publicly denies any direct involvement, most officials agree that President Kagame funds renegade General Laurent Nkunda’s militia in DRC – a militia whose primary purpose appears to be keeping Hutu rebels away from the Rwandan border. A UN report accuses Nkunda’s Tutsi faction of some of the worst human rights abuses of any rebel group currently operating in the eastern region. Though Kagame has undoubtedly brought strong economic development to the small great lakes nation, he has failed to adequately deal with the legacy of the 1994 genocide – the strained relationship between Hutus and Tutsis.

Bush knows that Rwanda’s involvement in the armed conflict in DRC delays peace in eastern Congo, but he continues to authorize military aid to Rwanda. In 2007, the United States armed and trained Rwandan soldiers with $7.2 million from the US defense program Africa Contingent Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA) and $260,000 from the International Military and Education (IMET) program. At the same time, the US is involved in facilitating peace talks between Rwanda and DRC and the various rebel groups operating in eastern Congo. Not only does arming Rwanda contradict the peace process, but it also delays the recovery of Rwanda from its 1994 genocide.

During the Cold War, the US provided military aid to African countries to counter communism. Many of those countries – Somalia, Sudan, Liberia, and DRC – have now become hotspots of violence and economic failure in Africa. It is no surprise that lending arms and financial support to corrupt dictators and human rights abusers contributes to destabilization, but still the US government has yet to learn its lesson. Today, the rationale for providing military aid to countries like Rwanda is to counter terrorism; likely, the methods and outcomes will be largely the same as they were in the 1980’s.

The Department of Defense argues that by training and equipping African military forces, it will bring greater stability and legitimacy to African governments. The case for professionalizing militaries was also made during the Cold War and it was a policy that ultimately failed. It should not be used again today to justify the self-interests of the United States.

This week, President Bush has the opportunity to encourage African governments to engage peacefully and democratically with their people and with each other, but only if the Administration’s actions are seen as legitimate by African nations. Most countries have voiced a vehement ‘no’ to the creation and implementation of a new US military command for Africa (AFRICOM) and other US military activities on the continent. For the sake of countries like DRC, Mr. Bush should begin with a drawing back of his own defense policy in Africa.

*Bahati Ntama Jacques is the Policy Analyst at Africa Faith and Justice Network (AFJN) in Washington, DC. He is Congolese.

**Beth Tuckey is the Associate Director of Program Development and Policy at Africa Faith and Justice Network (AFJN) in Washington, DC.

***Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

A Rwandan defence investigator accused of trying to fabricate evidence for the appeal in the genocide trial of the country’s former higher education minister has made his first appearance in his own case before the United Nations tribunal set up to deal with the mass killings that engulfed the small African nation in 1994.

Spain's National Court on Thursday ordered the detention of 40 Rwandan military officers on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and terrorism in connection with the deaths of more than four million people in the 1990s. The victims also included six Spanish missionaries and three aid workers, who were killed in refugee camps where they worked between 1994 and 2000.

A traditional "gacaca" court on Tuesday sentenced a doctor to 15 years in prison for his role in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, right groups confirmed. Theoneste Niyitegeka, who had wanted to join the country's presidential race in 2003, was first acquitted in October. Doctor Niyitegeka was arrested after judgment had been handed down.

France's foreign minister has said that his country was at fault politically in Rwanda, but bore no "military responsibility" for the 1994 genocide, in which 800,000 people were killed. Bernard Kouchner arrived in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, on Saturday on brief trip aimed at improving relations between the two countries.

In their attempts to reduce the rate of HIV/AIDS infection in the country, Rwanda authorities have voluntarily asked all uncircumcised men to be circumcised. Health experts proved that circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexual infection of the disease. Most people wonder how the government will succeed in its new campaign, especially in a pre-dominantly Christian society where very few people go through the operation.

Plans to begin teaching peace and reconciliation studies in universities are in the pipeline, an official at the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission (NURC) has said. According to Frank Kobukyeye who is in charge of conflict management at the commission, NURC is working with Permanent Education for Peace and Reconciliation (EPPR) to implement the programme.

A former officer of the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR), Lieutenant-Colonel Marcel Bivugabagabo, 53, was arrested Tuesday in Toulouse, southern France, at the request of the Rwandan authorities. Bivugabagabo, who was commander of the operational sector of Ruhengeri, northern Rwanda, during the genocide from April to July 1994, is sought for his participation in the killings.

All Rwandans at the cell level could have access to ICT facilities by the end of next year if plans presented by district mayors yesterday are implemented. A cell is the second lowest administrative level. While presenting their development plans, most mayors promised President Paul Kagame that by the end of next year, Information Communication and Technology (ICT) facilities would have been extended to the cell level.

Back in the 1970s, when Eldoret in Kenya was a relatively sleepy town, I was struck by the frontier-type mentality of many of the people I encountered there. Individuals and families came to this part of western Kenya to start a new life, and to try to make their fortune.

the French Court in Paris postponed a decision on the request of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to try Wencelas Munyeshyaka and Laurent Bucyibaruta before French courts for their alleged participation in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The decision was postponed to 30 January on formal grounds. Both are accused of genocide and crimes against humanity and both have been living in France since the genocide.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has lauded the abolition of the death penalty in Rwanda. Along with Gabon, which also recently decided to ban the practice, Rwanda joins "the vast majority of UN Member States that have already done so," Louise Arbour told the Human Rights Council, currently in its sixth session in Geneva.

The authors of the article argue that giving Africans ready access to the kind of information contained in the archives will play a part in fighting the apathy that catapulted events in Rwanda from civil strife to genocide.

All persons interested in ending mass atrocities in Africa must take active interest in the question of where the archives of the ICTR – and, for that matter, the archives of the Special Court for Sierra Leone – are located. As the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) winds down – according to its Completion Strategy - by 2010, the major question now emerging is where its archives and records will be located.

The United Nations has established a committee headed by Richard Goldstone, former judge of the South African Constitutional Court and former prosecutor for the ICTR and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to assess both tribunals, consult various stakeholders and evaluate relevant issues to inform its decision as to where the archives of both organs would eventually be sited. The committee will develop a set of parameters for assessing proposed locations to host the archives and determining the location most suited for that purpose.

It has been suggested that Africa is an unsuitable location for the archives of the ICTR; that the archives of the ICTR and the ICTY should be unified in one place, and that “natural” location for these archives should be The Hague, considered to be the judicial headquarters of the world. One suggestion is that Africa does not have the skills or capacities to host such records or guarantee that they will be accessible to the rest of the world.

The ICTR has housed its own records for the past eleven years that the Tribunal has been in existence. For this period, obviously, those records have enjoyed confidentiality that is essential both for the functioning of the Tribunal and for assuring the safety of witnesses, victims, and suspects before the Tribunal. Those records have been quite secure. After the Court has completed its work, it will be necessary to also assure that the records are classified, stored, and managed in such a way to ensure that they will be accessible to all interested in learning from them.

The Goldstone Committee will most probably focus on identifying institutions that will manage the archives. That institution, we submit, must be located and based in Africa. The reasons for this are overwhelming.

The circumstances leading to the establishment of the ICTR are well worth recalling here. Apathy defined the response of the world to the Rwanda genocide. The Oxford English Dictionary defines apathy as: ‘lacking interest or enthusiasm’. The people of Rwanda lived the consequences of global apathy during those eventful months of 1994. The tragic events that occurred have been well-documented. As those events occurred, the rest of the world in Africa and beyond watched. Estimates of the number of people killed during the genocide are somewhere between seven hundred thousand to one million.

Eventually galvanised into action after its stupor, the world in the United Nations created a tribunal to try those most responsible for the international crimes committed during those months of horror. The tribunal was established in Arusha, a small northern city in Tanzania, a country that has not known civil war or strife. Both the United Nations and the now defunct Organisation of African Unity (OAU) established panels to investigate why they were unable to mobilise effective action against such atrocity.

Arusha has played host to the ICTR for over one decade. During this time, it has quietly established itself as The Hague of Africa, hosting three international judicial bodies, one international, one regional, and one sub-regional. In addition to the ICTR, Arusha has also become host to the East African Court of Justice and, most recently, to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. It is the headquarters of Africa’s emerging regional judicial architecture.

This regional judicial system requires close monitoring and study by and for the benefit of people in Africa. The atrocities in Rwanda were committed by Africans against Africans. The archives of the judicial process of accountability - which is what the ICTR is - are an African heritage that must remain in Africa. There are several institutions in Africa – universities, research institutes, and regional institutions – within the region that can host it.

If the ICTR’s archives were to be re-relocated outside the continent, to, say, The Hague, access to them will be denied to an overwhelming majority of Africans, including most victims and survivors. With each passing year, Africans find it more difficult to gain entrance to European countries. European regimes for entry visas for Africans have become an obstacle course that only the rich and well-connected are confident of completing, and only few can breach. For the rest, it is a matter of ‘break a leg’. The price of international air travel is forbidding for most Africans.

Quite clearly, to even contemplate transferring the archives of the ICTR to anywhere outside Africa is the easiest way to exclude Africans from access to them. It dishonours all those who were killed while the world watched; and ensures that we learn no lessons from what happened. African’s will cease to have a stake in this particular heritage.

Global apathy catapulted the events in Rwanda from civil strife to genocide. It is important that we avoid another form of apathy from denying Africans the records of those horrific events. Citizen groups, governments, civic leaders, academic communities, activists, survivors groups, regional institutions, and friends of Africa everywhere must take the work of the Goldstone Committee seriously and demand that the archives of the ICTR remain in Africa. African governments, especially the governments of the East African Community countries must come together to identify an institution to play this role and mobilise the resources to support it. Nothing less will suffice.

* Yitiha Simbeye is a Tanzanian expert in international criminal law. Chidi Odinkalu is a Nigerian lawyer

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

The United Nations war crimes tribunal for the 1994 Rwandan genocide has sentenced a former witness to nine months in prison for giving false testimony during the trial of the country’s former higher education minister. The witness, identified only by the code name GAA, pleaded guilty to one count of contempt of court at a hearing this morning of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which sits in Arusha, Tanzania.

The United Nations tribunal dealing with the worst crimes committed during the 1994 Rwandan genocide has reduced the jail sentences of three former media executives convicted for inciting their compatriots to kill ethnic Tutsis. A five-member appeal panel at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which sits in Arusha, Tanzania, upheld the convictions of Ferdinand Nahimana, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza and Hassan Ngez.

The Security Council has commended the recent agreement of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda to work together against threats to peace and stability in the region, calling it “an important milestone towards the definitive settlement of the problem of illegal armed groups” operating in the turbulent far east of the DRC.

A special Rwandan commission handed over on Friday a 500-page report on France's alleged role in the country's 1994 genocide, the commission's president said. "We have achieved the first task and we will wait for the president of the republic to pronounce on the veracity of this inquiry so that it can be made public," said commission president Jean de Dieu Mucyo.

Reporters Without Borders has learned with great relief that Tatiana Mukakibibi, a former presenter and producer with state-owned Radio Rwanda, was finally acquitted of genocide charges by a “gacaca” popular tribunal in the southern district of Ruhango on 6 November after 11 years in pretrial detention. Aged 42, Mukakibibi was reunited with her family on 10 November.

Cutting-edge technology is helping Rwanda's Ministry of Health improve care for many of the nation's 190,000 HIV and AIDS-affected patients. Physicians say electronic reporting systems have changed the landscape of medical care in Rwanda.

Félicien Kabuga has a reward of several million dollars on his head, and tops the list of fugitives of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Yet, he's managed to escape justice for years. The ICTR was set up in Arusha, northern Tanzania, by the United Nations in 1995 to bring high level perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide to justice. Between 800,000 and a million minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the Central African nation over a period of about 100 days in 1994.