Some 1,000 Rwandan refugees residing in Sangha department of northern Republic of Congo have said they are interested in being repatriated, Roger Bouka-Owoko, communications officer for the Observatoire congolais des droits de l'homme (OCDH), a national human rights NGO, told IRIN. Given that the majority of the refugees work in the agriculture and livestock sectors of their host communities, they asked for time to put their affairs in order before any repatriation programme begins.

The 10th anniversary of the genocide has now been officially recognized by the Africa Union, the entity that replaced the Organisation of Africa Unity. The move resulted from an effort initiated by Remembering Rwanda and spearheaded by our colleague Abdul Mohammed of the InterAfrica Group in Addis Ababa. The resolution calls on all member states, African civil society organisations, as well as the United Nations, to take appropriate steps during the 10th anniversary to commemorate and reflect on the genocide.

Remembering Rwanda has been receiving increasing amounts of news about the progress of local commemoration committees, as well as increasing offers of cooperation from friends who want to offer their resources to the commemoration of the genocide. Several of these have photographic exhibitions to share, and they can be found in the Resource section of this website. Local progress can be found in Local Initiatives.

This year is the 10th Anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. An international campaign is underway to mobilise to mark this anniversary - "REMEMBERING RWANDA". As our contribution to this campaign, we will be featuring this special section called Remembering Rwanda. We also plan to publish a special issue on Rwanda in April 2004. Get involved! Organise an event in your institution, town, village or city. Send us information about what you are doing to commemorate the anniversary and to provide solidarity to the rebuilding of Rwanda.

Ten years after an orchestrated attempt to exterminate its Tutsi minority led to the deaths of up to a million people over the course of 100 days, the central African state of Rwanda still bears deep scars. The killings, organised by the Hutu government of the day, and carried out amid the total inaction of the international community, claimed up to 10 000 lives a day. The now ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which took power as a rebel group in July 1994, putting an end to the genocide, and its political partners have since placed much emphasis on national security, reconciliation and poverty reduction.

Along the Rwandan national highway there stands a tattered yellow sign caked in dirt and blackened by pollution. It reads “Muhazi Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration Camp, 300 Meters.” The narrow muddy road winds through plush green fields leading those willing to travel its path to a small patch of land lightly guarded by Kalashnikov - wielding Rwandan military personnel. Within the guarded perimeters of this small plot of land along the Rwandan-Congolese border, there lies a small makeshift camp with showers, dormitories, a kitchen, and a meeting hall. Black earth creeps onto everything, leaving dark smears on the walls of buildings and on clothing, even embedding itself in the cracks of calloused hands. It's mid August, around 3pm, already the sun's light is fading, and there is a chill in the air. The camp is the new home of the ex - Forces Armées Rwandaïses (FAR). These men and women were participants in the 1994 genocide. Forced out of the country and into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), they continued a life of ruthless violence. Many began military careers as children. Their stories are sometimes ones of unspeakable horror.

A HIV Survey amongst pregnant women attending clinics indicates the AIDS prevalence rate among the girls aged between 15 and 19 is now estimated at 4.8 per cent and the majority live in urban centres. Statistics from the third National Population and Housing census (2002) indicate that 67 per cent of the total population of 8.4 million in Rwanda is younger than 25 years. Only half of youth between 15 and 24 have both parents living; among the other half one in ten is head of a household.

Six African heads of state and government have confirmed to attend the forthcoming summit of the first African Peer Review (APR) Forum and the 9th Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee (HSGIC) on Feb. 13-14, Rwanda News Agency reported Tuesday. According to the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) secretariat in Kigali, heads of state and government who so far have confirmed their attendance to the summit include Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Joachim Chissano of Mozambique, Omar Bongo of Gabon, Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, John Kuffor of Ghana and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Thank you for the last edition of Pambazuka! Much appreciated and widely dispersed! I read with vivid interest the sober and chilling summary made by Caplan on Rwanda and it brought back plenty of memories. I note with interest that a number of committees have formed albeit outside Rwanda to commemorate the massacre. I always view such events with some misgivings. I tend to fear that such events become the grounding for a culture of disaster such as that perpetuated by the Jews and the Shoa who seem decidedly unwilling or unable to move on. But I acknowledge that it is only ten years since the atrocious events, which is to say early days. I won't talk about reconciliation since I don't believe that any one who is not directly involved is qualified to even articulate the word in such a situation. However, I think it would be good if people could move on and one thing that helps is to be able to clear the damage suffered. To again have a roof above one's head, to be able to buy food and clothing, to till the land, etc, in short to get back to normal life. But this requires material and financial means. (Not talk! talk! talk! It doesn't feed anybody!)

Extremely valuable. Thanks.

Rwandan authorities have come under fire for forcibly rounding up hundreds of street children in the capital, Kigali, ahead of an African leaders summit. When heads of state arrive later this month for a summit of the New Partnership for African Development (Nepad), they are unlikely to see many of the street children who used to loiter in the city centre, begging and sometimes stealing. Police have launched a wave of round-ups since December aimed at getting the children off the streets. Hundreds have been detained in a transit centre outside the capital.

This is a film which deals with the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. The film ventures into the rural heart of the African nation of Rwanda to follow the first steps in one of the world's boldest experiments in political reconciliation: the Gacaca (Ga-CHA-cha) Tribunals. A full synopsis of the film is available at the web site provided.

"Recognizing that April 2004 is the tenth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, the General Assembly:
1. Decides to designate 7 April 2004 as the International Day of Reflection on the genocide in Rwanda,
2. Encourages all Member States, organisations of the United Nations system and other relevant international organisations, as well as civil society organisations, to observe the International Day, including special observances and activities in memory of the victims of the genocide in Rwanda."

Around the world, commemorations of the 10th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide are about to be launched. The central actors responsible for allowing Hutu extremists to perpetrate the genocide are well known: the government of France, the United Nations Security Council led by the USA with British backing, the UN Secretariat, the government of Belgium, and, by no means least, the Roman Catholic Church. The Organization of African Unity also refused to condemn the genocidaires and proved to be largely irrelevant throughout the crisis. As a consequence of these acts of commission and omission, 800,000 Tutsi and thousands of moderate Hutu were murdered in a period of 100 days. Reviewing the events of those days, I find myself thinking not once but repeatedly: It's almost impossible to believe that any of this actually happened. The following is a selection of some of those events. They, and the lessons they suggest, are worth bearing in mind as we who refuse to let the memory of the genocide dissipate begin our commemorations of the 10th anniversary.

1. Time and again in the months prior to and during the genocide, the Commander of the UN military mission to Rwanda (UNAMIR) pleaded with the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York to expand his very limited mandate. The only time his request was ever approved was in the days immediately after the Rwandan president's plane was shot down, triggering the genocide. UNAMIR was then authorized to exceed its narrow mandate exclusively for the purpose of helping to evacuate foreign nationals, mainly westerners, from the country. Never was such flexibility granted to protect Rwandans.

2. Heavily armed western troops began materializing at Kigali airport within hours to evacuate their nationals. Beyond UNAMIR's 2500 peacekeepers, these included 500 Belgian para-commandos, 450 French and 80 Italian troops from parachute regiments, another 500 Belgian para-commandos on stand-by in Kenya, 250 US Rangers on stand-by in Burundi, and 800 more French troops on stand-by in the region. None made any attempt to protect Rwandans at risk. Besides western nationals, French troops evacuated a number of well-known leaders of the extremist Hutu Power movement, including the wife of the murdered president and her family. All non-UNAMIR troops left within days, immediately after their evacuation mission was completed.

3. From the beginning of the genocide to its end, no government or organization other than NGOs formally described events in Rwanda as a genocide.

4. From beginning to end, all governments and official bodies continued to recognize the genocidaire government as the legitimate government of Rwanda.

5. The months of the genocide happened to coincide with Rwanda's turn to fill one of the non-permanent seats on the Security Council. Throughout those 3 months, the representative of the government executing the genocide continued to take that seat and participate in all deliberations, including discussions on Rwanda.

6. Almost all official bodies remained neutral as between the genocidaires and the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the mostly Tutsi rebels in the civil war that was being fought at the same time as the genocide. As if they were morally equivalent groups, both the genocidaire government and those fighting to end the genocide were called upon by the UN, the Organization of African Unity and others to agree to a cease-fire. They did not call on the genocidaires to stop the genocide. Had the RPF agreed to a cease-fire, the scale of the genocide behind governemtn lines would have been even greater.

7. Only days after the genocide began, 2500 Tutsi as well as Hutu opposition politicians crowded into a Kigali school known as ETO, where Belgian UN troops were billeted; at least 400 of them were children. They were seeking protection against menacing militia and government soldiers outside the compound. In the midst of the stand-off, the Belgian soldiers were ordered to depart ETO to assist in evacuating foreign nationals from the country. They did so abruptly, making no arrangements whatever for the protection of those they were safeguarding. As they moved out, the killers moved in. When the afternoon was over, all 2500 civilians had been murdered.

8. After 10 Belgian UN soldiers were killed by Rwandan government troops the day after the Rwandan President's plane was shot down, Belgium withdrew all its troops from the UN mission. So that Belgium would not alone be blamed for scuttling UNAMIR, its government then strenuously lobbied the UN to disband the mission in its entirety.

9. Two weeks after the crisis had begun, with information about the magnitude of the genocide increasing by the day, the Security Council did come very close to shutting down UNAMIR altogether. Instead, led by the USA and the United Kingdom, it voted to decimate the mission, reducing it from 2500 to 270.

10. After the deaths of 18 American soldiers in Somalia in October 1993, the United States decided to participate in no more UN military missions. The Clinton administration further decided that no significant UN missions were to be allowed at all, even if American troops would not be involved. Thanks mostly to the delaying tactics of the US, after 100 days of the genocide not a single reinforcement of UN troops or military supplies had reached Rwanda.

11. Bill Clinton later apologized for not doing more to stop the genocide. However, his claim that his administration had not been aware of the real situation was a lie.

12. French officials were senior advisers to both the Rwandan government and military in the years leading to the genocide, with unparalleled influence on both. Virtually until the moment the genocide began, they gave unconditional support as well as considerable arms to the Hutu elite. Throughout the 100 days and long after, French officials and officers remained hostile to the “anglo-saxon” RPF, whose victory ended the genocide. To this day the French have never acknowledged their role nor apologized for it.

13. After 6 weeks of genocide, France, which offered no troops to the UN mission, suddenly decided to intervene in Rwanda. Within a week of the decision, Operation Turquoise was able to deploy 2500 men with 100 armored personnel carriers, 10 helicopters, a battery of 120 mm mortars, 4 Jaguar fighter bombers, and 8 Mirage fighters and reconnaissance planes---all for an ostensibly humanitarian operation. The French forces created a safe haven in the south-west of the country which provided sanctuary not only to fortunate Tutsi but also to many leading Rwandan government and military officials as well as large numbers of soldiers and militia---the very Hutu Power militants who had organized and carried out the genocide. Not a single person was arrested by France for crimes against humanity. All were allowed to escape across the border into then-Zaire, entirely unrepentant and often still armed. Predictably, these genocidaires were soon launching murderous excursions back into Rwanda, beginning a cycle that led to the subsequent bloody conflict that destabilizes central Africa still.

14. France long remained hostile to the post-genocide government in Rwanda and sympathetic to the previous French-speaking Hutu regime. Many of the leaders of the new government were from English-speaking Uganda and were considered the “anglo-saxon” enemy by the French government. In November 1994, barely four months after the end of the genocide, Rwanda was deliberately excluded from the annual Franco-African summit hosted by France. Zaire's President Mobutu, who had been ostracized by the French government in recent years, was invited, as was Robert Mugabe, the anglophone president of anglophone Zimbabwe.

15. The Roman Catholic Church in Rwanda was the largest and most influential denomination in the country, with intimate ties to the government at all levels. It failed to denounce the government's explicit ethnic foundations, failed to denounce its increasing use of violence against Tutsi, failed to denounce or even name the genocide, failed to apologize for the many clergy who aided and abetted the genocidaires, and to this day has never apologized for its overall role. The Pope has refused to apologize on behalf of the Church as a whole.

16. Within months of the end of the genocide, relief workers and representatives of the international community in Rwanda were telling Rwandans they must “Quit dwelling on the past and concentrate on rebuilding for the future” and insisting that “Yes, the genocide happened, but it's time to get over it and move on.”

17. George W. Bush, during the campaign for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, was asked by a TV interviewer what he would do as president if, “God forbid, another Rwanda” should take place. He replied: “We should not send our troops to stop ethnic cleansing and genocide outside our own strategic interest. I would not send US troops into Rwanda.”

18. The new Rwanda Patriotic Front government inherited a debt of close to $1 billion, some of it incurred by the previous government in genocide preparations---expanding its army and militias and buying arms. After the genocide, the RPF was obligated to repay in full the country's debt to its western lenders.

19. Following the genocide, the World Bank was left with a $160 million program of aid to Rwanda that it had extended to the previous government. . Even though the new government was penniless, the Bank refused to activate that sum until the new government paid $9 million in interest incurred by its predecessor. A Bank official told a UN representative: “After all, we are a commercial enterprise and have to adhere to our regulations. “ The sum was eventually paid by some donors.

20. In the first nine months after the genocide, the donor community provided $1.4 billion in aid to the Hutu refugee camps in eastern Zaire and Tanzania. Since, as was universally known, genocidaires had taken over the camps, a good part of these funds went to feed and shelter them and to fund their re-training and re-arming as they planned cross-border raids back into Rwanda. For Rwanda itself, while donor funds for reconstruction were generously pledged, in the first year after the genocide only $68 million was actually disbursed. To this day, Rwanda has never received reparations remotely commensurate with the damage that the international community had failed to prevent.

21. Once the genocide ended, the UN military mission was finally expanded. As UNAMIR II, it remained in Rwanda for almost two more years as a peacekeeping force, costing the UN $15 million a month. But the main challenge had become less one of peacekeeping and more one of peace-building--- the reconstruction of a totally devastated country. UNAMIR had the equipment, the skills and the will to play a major role in reviving the country's shattered structures. What it lacked was the mandate and modest funding from the Security Council to perform such a role. But UN headquarters never sought such authorization from the Security Council, nor did the Council ever initiate such a move.

22. When a UN mission leaves a country, it follows a formula to determine how much of its equipment should be left behind. UNAMIR owned much desperately needed equipment, from computers to vehicles to furniture. When the mission wrapped up in April 1996, both UN officials in Kigali and members of the Security Council urged UN headquarters to interpret the formula with maximum generosity and flexibility; they believed that 80% of all non-lethal equipment should remain in Rwanda. UN headquarters announced that 93% of all equipment was to be transported out of the country for storage or use elsewhere . After much pressure was applied, the UN bureaucracy decreed finally that 62% of all equipment be removed.

23. So far as is known, not a single person in any government or in the UN has ever been fired or held accountable for failing to intervene in the genocide. In fact, the opposite is true. Some careers flourished in the aftermath. Several of the main actors were actually promoted. We can consider this the globalization of impunity.

24. Despite the unanimity of every major study undertaken and in the face of the testimonies of survivors and the first-hand accounts of international humanitarian workers in Rwanda at the time, denial of the genocide persists. Deniers include Hutu Power advocates, many of them still active in western countries, as well as lawyers and investigators working for Hutu clients at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Denying the Rwandan genocide is the moral equivalent of denying the Holocaust.

* Gerald Caplan is the author of Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide (2000), the report of the International Panel of Eminent Personalities appointed by the Organization of African Unity to investigate the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and the founder of "Remembering Rwanda: The Rwanda Genocide 10th Anniversary Memorial Project".

* Send comments on this editorial - and other events in Africa - to

NOTE FROM PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORS: This year is the 10th Anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, an event that, as Gerald Caplan so succinctly summarises, was marked by the failure of the international community, complacency, neglect and, in some cases, outright collusion. An international campaign is underway to mobilise to mark this anniversary - "REMEMBERING RWANDA". As our contribution to this campaign, we will be featuring a section called Remembering Rwanda (see below). We also plan to publish a special issue on Rwanda in April 2004. Get involved! Organise an event in your institution, town, village or city. Send us information about what you are doing to commemorate the anniversary and to provide solidarity to the rebuilding of Rwanda."

* 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.

The government is trying to drive forward reconciliation but doesn't the memory of the genocide, the bodies in the churches and classrooms hinder the process? "Memory is very important because it is the foundation of the prevention of genocide in the future generation," says Francois Gurambe, the chairman of the national survivor group Ibuka or Remember. " We think that remembrance is important in the construction of a united society because you can't have a united society without justice. Justice means first of all truth and truth is not possible without remembrance."

Politicians and civil servants in Rwanda have been asked to declare their wealth in a campaign against corruption in government. Rwanda's newly appointed Ombudsman Tito Rutaremara has told the BBC those who do not comply will be prosecuted. Starting this week, leaders, who include President Paul Kagame, will fill in forms stating what they own.

Rwanda has allowed the first private radio stations to start broadcasting since the 1994 genocide. Five new stations have already been given permission to set up and two more religious stations will be authorised soon, said the information minister.

A Rwandan rebel movement based in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Forces democratiques de liberation du Rwanda (FDLR), has dismissed as unfounded reports that it had prevented some 3,000 former combatants and civilians from returning to Rwanda. "The FDLR has always supported the right of any Rwandan refugee to return freely to his homeland," Augustin Dukuze, the FDLR spokesman, said on Saturday.

The Foundation for Democracy in Africa (FDA) – a U.S.-based African diaspora-led human rights organisation – has been instrumental in establishing an International Studies Partnership exchange programme involving FAWE Girls’ School in Kigali, Rwanda and Miami Carol City Senior High School in Miami, Florida. The programme aims at promoting cultural and curriculum exchanges between the two schools. The Education for Development Initiative (EDDI)/ USAID and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation are sponsoring the programme.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has handed down two life sentences to former Education and Culture Minister Jean de Dieu Kamuhanda for the crimes of genocide and extermination, committed during Rwanda's 1994 genocide, which claimed 800,000 lives. On eight other counts of complicity in genocide, crimes against humanity for murder, rape, and other inhuman acts and serious violations of the Geneva Conventions, Kamuhanda was found either not guilty or the charges were dropped.