In the years that Rwanda's ruling party, the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), has been in power, it has done much to portray itself as the party for all the country's people. It is an illusion that no one believes, but that everyone - Rwandans and observing foreigners alike - seems willing to accept. The RPF's stated ideology is reconciliation between the majority Hutu and minority Tutsi, whose relationship since independence 42 years ago has been punctuated by a series of state-sponsored ethnic massacres culminating in the 1994 genocide that killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and their sympathisers.

Poachers have burned one-third of Rwanda's largest national park, hampering efforts to protect wildlife from dangers posed by the country's fast growing rural population. Akagera is a haven for wildlife in overcrowded Rwanda, where more than 8 million people are squeezed into just 10,160 square miles and deforestation is already widespread. The sprawling park in the east of the country is home to elephants, giraffes, zebra, and various species of antelope and monkey.

Congolese army troops have killed 23 Rwandan Hutu militia, known as Interahamwe, in the eastern province of North Kivu, an official told IRIN on Monday. Gen Obedi Rwabasira, the commander of the Eighth Military Region of the Democratic Republic of Congo Armed Forces, said government forces killed the militia on Friday in the villages of Rubare and Kingi, north of the provincial capital, Goma.

The Rwandan government should reject a parliamentary request to dissolve one of the country's leading human rights groups unfairly accused by a parliamentary commission of harbouring genocidal ideas, Human Rights Watch says. After three days of debate, the Rwandan parliament on Wednesday asked the government to dissolve the League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (Ligue Rwandaise pour la promotion et la défense des droits de l'homme, or Liprodhor) and four other civil society organizations because they allegedly supported genocidal ideas.

Four people have died and 540 others have been hospitalised following an outbreak of typhoid fever in northwestern Rwanda, Desire Ndushabandi, the health ministry's secretary-general, told IRIN last Thursday. "We have embarked on an intensive campaign to sensitise the population on the need to improve their sanitation," he said.

The Rwandan government has officially requested the presences of a third party verification mechanism, consisting of UN and African Union (AU) officials, to help resolve tensions with the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Rwandan Foreign Minister Charles Muligande made the announcement following talks between President Paul Kagame and an AU delegation led by the chairman of the AU Peace and Security Council, Ambassador Mame Balla Sy.

Calm has returned to Kalehe in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) province of South Kivu after government troops regained control of the town from dissident soldiers, Sebastien Lapierre, a spokesman for the UN Mission in the country, known as MONUC, told IRIN on Tuesday. The dissident troops, led by Gen Laurent Nkunda, had on 8 June retreated to Kalehe from the South Kivu capital of Bukavu, following a weeklong occupation of the latter town that left nearly 100 people dead.

All Canadians in Toronto are invited to experience an event highlighting the Rwandan people and culture which survived the horrible 1994 genocide - where more than one million were murdered in just over 100 days. Canadians played an important role in Rwanda in 1994 and continue to work closely with Rwandans here and in Africa to rebuild Rwanda and to remember the country that is and that was. Hence the meaning of Ibutsa - "for those who know must tell".

The sentencing of former Rwandese president Pasteur Bizimungu and seven co-defendants is further proof of the government's willingness to subvert the Rwandese criminal justice system in an attempt to eliminate all potential political opposition, says Amnesty International. The trial and judgment of these men combined with other recent events demonstrate the government's readiness to deny the civil and political rights of individuals and civil society organizations that dare to criticize the RPF-controlled government.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) expressed concern on Tuesday over ongoing tension in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), near the border with Rwanda, saying this could hinder its efforts to help refugees on both sides. The agency reported that following Rwanda's closure of the border on Sunday, no new arrivals had been reported in Rwanda's western province of Cyangugu. The government had given assurances that Congolese refugees would still be allowed to cross into Rwanda. Since 26 May, when fighting broke out between loyalist and dissident Congolese troops in the eastern Congolese town of Bukavu, thousands of refugees had crossed into Cyangugu before the announcement of the border closure.

The international community must act urgently - and be prepared to use force if necessary - to save hundreds of thousands of civilians whose lives are at risk because of Sudan's brutal counter-insurgency in its western region of Darfur. There must be immediate, focused action, especially from the UN Security Council, to stop the killing and widespread atrocities, prevent mass starvation, reverse ethnic cleansing, and encourage a peace process, says the International Crisis Group. Experts warn that some 350,000 people could perish in the next nine months, mainly from famine, disease and malnutrition. More will die if the government-supported Janjaweed militias are not stopped.

This study explores how education in situations of post-conflict emergency can be established and maintained as a vital psychological support to children and communities. Specifically, the study investigates how education for refugee children emerged and developed after the genocide in Rwanda caused hundreds of thousands to flee to neighbouring countries. The focus of the study is Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1994 and 1996.

Trade union rights are a misnomer in Rwanda according to a new International Confederation of Free Trade Unions report launched to coincide with the WTO review on Rwandan trade policy (10th and 12th May). The ICFTU report on the central African country shows shortcomings in the application of several core labour conventions which the government itself has ratified and calls upon the Rwandan authorities to comply with core labour standards. The report identifies several legal failings, particularly concerning the right to strike.

Interahamwe militia in the western town of Kibuye allegedly forced captured children to reveal where adults in the Bisesero hills were hiding during the 1994 Rwanda genocide. This was revealed Tuesday by a prosecution witness at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), where a former councillor of Gishyita (Kibuye), Mika Muhimana, is on trial for genocide and crimes against humanity committed against Tutsis between April and July 1994.

A group of Rwandan refugees in Namibia will embark on a "go and see" mission to their home country to assess conditions for their proposed voluntary repatriation. This visit is being organised to allay the concerns of the nearly 500 Rwandan refugees over their safety once they return. In April a group of Rwandans fled Namibia's Osire refugee camp and told the local Namibian newspaper that they did not want to be repatriated.

There is no doubt that the painful memory of the 800,000 victims of the Genocide in Rwanda will live with us forever. For many years to come, we will continue to unearth the remains of children, women and men hacked to death in one of the most frenzied, planned and organised massacres ever witnessed by the world.

For the past ten years we said never again, we made resolutions, we set up commissions and tribunals, we organised conferences … yet Genocide was revisited this very year, Rwanda's Tenth year. Still sore and raw in our memories, the Genocide of Rwanda has made way to that of Darfur.

Same crimes, same atrocities and same disregard to human lives. In the name of greed, hatred and spite, the Janjaweed, the Sudanese government armed militias and very much equivalent to the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi of Rwanda, have killed, looted, burnt, and raped their neighbours. Like vultures, they have cleansed villages from their people and destroyed the dreams of entire communities.

In the space of a few months more they have uprooted from their homes more than one million people and reduced them to statistics for the UN and for various humanitarian organisations. The early warning signs were very much present in Darfur. For more than three decades, indigenous Africans - Fur, Massaleet and Zaghawa to name but a few - were at the mercy of successive ruthless regimes, military as well as the so-called “democratically elected” government of Sadiq el Mahdi (1986-89).

Ruling by the gun and with the gun they imposed a religious-ethnic-sectarian ideology on the country. Their proxy killers, Muraheleen in the South and Janjaweed in Darfur, implemented various scorched-earth strategies to take over land, pastures and water points from their legitimate owners. For years, the international community and us Africans, deserted Darfur. ‘Il n'est pire sourd que celui qui ne veut pas entendre’ (so we closed our eyes and turned away) from the plight of the people of Darfur.

Better not to see, not to hear and not to know was the general attitude. Now, there is some hope, or should we say, there was some hope when two weeks ago, a cease-fire agreement was signed in N'djamena between the Darfur fighters and the Sudanese government.

The 45-day cease-fire that was to come into effect on Sunday 11 April was mainly meant to guarantee safe passage for humanitarian aid, free prisoners of war and especially disarm militias. The ceasefire is good news and a first step to stop the killing but it requires the immediate dispatch to Darfur of an international monitoring team of observers, military and civilian, to prevent further killing, stop the continued displacement of the population and secure humanitarian assistance to the people.

Today, after ten days, where do we stand? Recently, Kofi Annan has pointed out that UN peacekeepers "are no longer restricted to using force only in self-defence” and that they are also “empowered (to protect) local civilians threatened with imminent violence." At the time of the Genocide of Rwanda, Kofi Annan was Under Secretary General for UN Peace Keeping Operations (PKO) and we all know what happened. Today he is UN Secretary General, he is Alpha Dog, but will he give his marching orders to “armed” peacekeepers?

Again and again Khartoum has broken its agreements, prevented a UN human rights team from entering the country to investigate the widespread atrocities committed in Darfur, delayed humanitarian workers to reach the displaced, denied entry to independent observers, turned away the media, closed the borders. The list of Khartoum's violations is too long to continue.

- On the humanitarian front, reports indicate that “nearly 3 million people are beyond the reach of aid agencies trying to provide assistance, and mortality rates in the region are possibly as high as 1,000 per week”.

- On the military front, the ink was hardly dry on that farcical cease-fire agreement before government-backed Janjaweed Arab militias were back into action. Mounting attacks against civilians in Mastrey, a farming locality south of Al Geneina (Western Darfur) and south of Nyala, the capital of Southern Darfur. Despite denying any violation of the cease-fire, Khartoum's request to “postpone” the trip of the chief of the UN Emergency Relief clearly indicates that the fighting is still continuing and that the Janjaweed have not been disarmed.

Shall we give Khartoum the credit of the doubt when instead of disarming the Janjaweed the Sudanese government is providing them with military costumes and integrating them into its regular forces and into the much-hated Popular Defence Forces (PDF)?

Now, as Khartoum's “official” killing machine they have been posted in and around Nyala, capital of Southern Darfur, preventing the return of the refugees. They are attacking internally displaced people and preventing them from returning to their homes. They are occupying the farmland and villages of the Fur farmers they chased away earlier, and refusing to allow them to retake possession of what remain from their homes.

Posted on the borders with Chad, they are preventing anyone crossing into Darfur. Aid agencies allowed in the region have reported that “Sudanese soldiers” have even beaten back women searching for food and firewood. By enrolling the Janjaweed into its regular forces, Khartoum is not only protecting its proxy killers, but also it is covering up its own crimes against the people of Darfur.

The European Union (EU) has put forward a resolution calling for a special Rapporteur to monitor human rights abuses in Sudan, but the vote was postponed until April 22 at the request of the African group. Coordinated by the government of Congo-Brazzaville, the African Group has consistently blocked scrutiny of African governments regardless of their human rights records.

Isn't it true that the well being and the safety of a country's nationals is the first and foremost duty of a responsible government? Isn't it true that that duty is enshrined in national constitutions in Africa as it is elsewhere in the world and that it figures also in the Charter that governs the African Union? Indeed the African Union has announced from Addis Ababa that it will deploy military observers next week to the Darfur region to monitor the ceasefire.

According to Said Djinnit, AU's Commissioner for Peace and Security, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and Namibia have agreed to send military officers to be deployed in the region. Discussions are under way in N'djamena and in Addis for the arrangements but reports from the Chadian capital are grim and nothing has been decided as we go to press.

The Sudanese government and the Darfur fighters are to meet again next week in the Chadian capital to iron out a definitive settlement to the conflict, whereby the political issues that have driven the people of Darfur to rebel, will be addressed.

The most crucial issues are land and water points and as redistribution of farmland is high on Khartoum's agenda, Fur leaders are suspicious about the recent Idriss Deby-Omar el Beshir's meeting in N'djamena. The Fur believe that to quell any dissent among the Zaghawa, on either side of its borders, the Chadian president would favour them in any future political settlement between Khartoum and fighters. Such arrangements would be in line with the “divide and rule” policy that Khartoum pursued for years in the South.

I doubt whether the people of Darfur can still trust any one to come to their help. Already they have lost faith in a government that has devoted its time and efforts to usurp them from their land, kill their children and force the survivors into exile.

Now it is the turn of the African community to fail them. We reported here in Pambazuka News 112 that the challenges facing Africans and the African Union are enormous. On each and every front - economic, social, scientific and political - the continent is “yet to fulfil its potential”. Ten years after Rwanda and in the wake of Darfur, many African political and civil society activists are calling for the establishment of an “early warning mechanism” for detecting any attempt, by groups or governments, to violate human rights in any part of the continent.

DEADLINE UPDATE FROM THE AUTHOR: The five-member delegation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has just left Geneva for Darfur, after weeks of waiting for permission to travel into the region. However, in an interim report, based on interviews carried out by the team with refugees in camps along the Chadian borders, the OHCHR lists numerous cases of murder, rape, arbitrary killings and expulsion, committed against the Black African communities of Darfur. These are extremely serious accusations that amount to "crimes against humanity".

* Send comments on this editorial - and other events in Africa - to For more news and information on the situation in Sudan, please visit the Conflicts and Emergencies section of Pambazuka News.

* Eva Dadrian is an independent broadcaster and Political and Country Risk Analyst for print and broadcast media, who currently works as a consultant for Arab African Affairs (London) and writes on a regular basis for AFRICA ANALYSIS (London), for Al Ahram HEBDO Echos Economiques and Al Ahram WEEKLY (Cairo) and contributes to Africa Service BBC WS (London). Published reports include: Religion and Politics in North Africa; The Horn of Africa: Country Risk Analysis; The Nile Waters: Risk Analysis; State and Church in Ethiopia; Policing the Horn of Africa; Religion and Politics in Sudan; Can South Sudan survive as an independent state?

* NOTE FOR EDITORS: Please note that this editorial was commissioned from the author for Pambazuka News. While we are pleased that several print publications have used our editorials, we ask editors to note that if they use this article, they do so on the understanding that they are expected to provide the following credit: "This article first appeared in Pambazuka News, an electronic newsletter for social justice in Africa, Editors are also encouraged to make a donation.

* CORRECTION: Please note that Patrick Bond, the author of last week’s editorial (Pambazuka News 152: After the South African election, rhetorics and realities), has pointed out that the reference to more than 50 Landless People’s Movement activists arrested on 14 April should have read “more than 60”. For the latest news on this issue see the Land and Land Rights section of this issue.

Advocates for survivors of genocide in Rwanda have called for antiretroviral treatment to be made available free to women who were infected with HIV during the systematic rape of tens of thousands in 1994. The Survivors Fund has launched an online petition calling on the British government to do more to pressurise pharmaceutical companies to make antiretroviral treatment affordable in Rwanda. International donors are also being urged to do more to help Rwandan women.

Not enough thought and resources has been given to healing the wounds of survivors of the Rwandan genocide, says African Rights in a new report. "Many say that for them it is as if time has stood still - their everyday lives are still dominated by the genocide." African Rights said much more must urgently be done. "We issue a special plea to the international community to recognize in particular the unbearable suffering endured by the survivors of genocide and rape and their immediate need of assistance." The report 'Broken Bodies, Torn Spirits, Living with Genocide, Rape and HIV/AIDS' provides detailed testimony of the condition of genocide survivors.

The official version of the Rwandan genocide is largely a fairytale, argues commentator George Monbiot in this article from The Guardian UK. Monbiot argues that the recent commemorations of the genocide masked the resource-plunder of the DRC by the Rwandan government. "The prosperity which has helped to secure peace in Rwanda derives in large part from the plunder which has helped to sustain war in the DRC," he writes.

We need to do more than hope, we need to make it a reality. That means that we need to enlist those that are working for good to work together, we need to network and to utilise our collective resources for targeted and significant action.

Everyday in South Africa, where we also celebrate 10 years of democracy after a complicated oppression, I am in awe of how much work needs to be done. Everyday I am witness to both tragedy and triumph - but I know this - we must go on, we must go forward, and we must do it now.

While so many countries immerse themselves in strife - our world is being lost to us, the breath of our mornings forever lost - our lives, our futures tainted and the futures of our children snatched from their cradles.

Just a few years back, I lived some time in Jerusalem and travelled much around Israel. It was a girl called Simone in the northern town of Akko who convinced me to attend the holocaust museum there. At first I was reticent. But she persisted - she said: "You need to know, so that THIS may never happen again." I went. Indeed, 50 years + after the holocaust, I fail to understand things so painful that the mind cannot comprehend them, but I have learnt that people need to know. People need to learn to feel for each other again - and cease from reducing themselves to redundant elements of the systems that proliferate oppression.

We need to build awareness - so that people can act.

There is no "Africa", or "Europe" - there is you and me, each one of us in Africa, or Europe. People make a country, not countries, their people.

These things were NOT MEANT TO BE - it is time for us to wake up and realise that they are not INEVITABLE - they are the collective result of individual choices - made in error and blindness and greed. None of these characteristics are essential to the human character, they are forged by circumstance, social disintegration, lack of self esteem, domination....

But within us all we have the capacity to love, to nurture and to heal. We all must work towards the realisation of these qualities within ourselves and our communities and those of us who are willing and able, have a moral obligation to strive for our brothers freedoms, not only our own.

We write history each day as we each make a passage through our lives, every little action and every grand gesture. We are not puppets - and the time has come for us to break free of the kind of thinking that accepts inevitability, that instils in us inertia.

It is not escapist to say that the "International Community" fails Africa. In many ways, it does, in many ways, the global family fails itself, Africa fails herself and she fails the international community. It is so terribly easy to fail, but in so many ways, we must recognise we have triumphed.

We must strive to respond to any "accusations" of failure with open hearts - to say "If I have failed you brother - let me redress - if I can help you sister - let me take a stand, and if I fail because you are beyond my reach and means, may God help me to keep trying again."

Let us never forget.
(A response to Valentine Ngwa published in Pambazuka News last week, from the AFRO-NETS mailing list)