Against the backdrop of last week's declaration by foreign affairs minister Olu Adeniyi that Nigeria has ratified the UN Anti Corruption Convention, Independent Advocacy Project (IAP), the good governance group, has urged the federal government to also ratify the African Union (AU) Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption which was adopted last July in Maputo, Mozambique by African Heads of State. While describing the ratification of the UN Convention as a significant development, IAP in a statement released in Lagos points out that both the UN and the AU Conventions are useful instruments and that one should not be ratified to the neglect of the other.

Nigeria's ruling People Democratic Party (PDP) has won a sweeping victory in local elections during which almost 50 people died. President Olusegun Obasanjo's party now controls almost all levels of government across the country. The local elections were marred with claims of massive rigging and recorded a very low turn out.

Robert Mugabe's government has terrorised almost every single opposition member of Zimbabwe's parliament with violence, intimidation and jail, according to a new report. A survey of 50 of the Movement for Democratic Change's 59 MPs and of 28 of its parliamentary candidates found that all claimed to have personally experienced human rights abuses in the past three years at the hands of the security services and supporters of the ruling Zanu-PF party. In collecting MPs' accounts of vandalism, torture and attempted assassination for the first time, the Zimbabwe Institute, a non-governmental organisation based in South Africa, said it had revealed the price of standing up to Mugabe.

The path to democracy is long and weary, experience has shown. Unfortunately there is no shortcut that one can take because the entrenchment of democratic thinking has to be firmly anchored in the mind of the nation through experience, sometimes very painful. It is a good thing for us that we do not have to re-invent the wheel. It is there, rolling in our lives, and sometimes we take this for granted.

Rwandan refugees rose to prominence in 1994 when their mass exodus to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo - DRC), Tanzania and Uganda was broadcasted globally. At the same time a less well-known group of Rwandan refugees who had been in Uganda since 1959 returned to their country on the heels of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), which itself was made up of 1959 refugees. Moreover, the majority of those Rwandans who did not cross the border in 1994, thereby not being counted as refugees, were in one way or another uprooted and at least temporarily internally displaced. The history of this small country of the thousand hills is also a history of refugees.

Now, ten years after the war and the genocide, the complexities of Rwandan refugees persist and possibly even deepen. The two main trajectories along which the complexity of Rwandan refugees should be conceptualised are firstly, their different backgrounds and secondly, the intricacy of bringing them back home.

About 80,000 Rwandans still remain refugees in mostly African countries and they hardly represent a coherent lot. This is to say that there are qualitatively different Rwandan refugee populations. A way of shedding light onto this complexity is to compare the big remaining groups in DRC, Uganda and Tanzania. The second form of complexity with regard to Rwandan refugees has a more long term orientation and will only matter upon repatriation. It is the complexity of bringing them home in a sustainable and thus responsible way.

When the RPF started making advances inside Rwanda, Hutus started crossing the borders first and foremost into Zaire, Tanzania and Uganda. In Zaire, a large group of extremist Hutus, i.e. perpetrators of the genocide, were able to hide out in the Kivu hinterland - protected by the infamous “Operation Turquoise”. The dilemma of those extremists residing in camps or elsewhere in the Kivus has been a source for international debates about humanitarian assistance. To this day, it is the reason why the current government of Rwanda has a highly critical view of UNHCR. The presence of those extremists has not only provided a pretext for continued intervention by the government of Rwanda in Zaire and later DRC, but also poses a big challenge today when it comes to repatriation.

As such, radical Hutu elements barricaded areas in the Kivus in early 2004 to prevent moderate elements from demobilising under UN auspices and thus from returning to Rwanda. In the long run, it will be this group that will be pivotal in deciding whether Rwanda as a united nation has a future or not. Will they follow one of their former rebel leaders General Paul Rwarakabije and return voluntarily to Rwanda (as the former did in November 2003) or will they only stop fighting once the government in Kigali is overthrown?

The group of Rwandan refugees in Uganda does not compare to the group hiding in the Kivus. For starters, it is highly unlikely that the group contains high level perpetrators of the genocide, as they moved into the territory of the government that was a supporter, an ally as well as a mentor for the RPF in the 1980s. The Rwandans in Uganda fled the atrocities in their homeland and managed to create veritable settlements including their own livestock. They are everything but hiding. If anything they have built respectable homes for themselves, which now requires a rather high incentive to lure them back to Rwanda. Studies and research in the Ourchinga and Nakivale settlements have highlighted this tendency as well as capacity for economic development.

The group of Rwandan refugees that still resides in Tanzania today is different yet again in composition and origin. Those 500,000 who fled in April 1994 (250,000 crossed Rusumo bridge on 28 April alone) did certainly contain extremist elements similar to those in the Kivus. But the display of Rwandan decisiveness in Eastern Congo in 1996 and limited funding for those refugees led to a full-scale repatriation exercise.

The residual group of refugees today is qualitatively different from the ones in DRC (ex-Zaire) and Uganda. The situation in Tanzania prior to 1994 was yet a different one, and new arrivals in after the genocide mixed with Rwandans that had already been there for years if not decades. Under Nyerere and his pan-African ideology all refugees were embraced and welcomed to Tanzania, not only Rwandans. Some came prior to Rwandan independence in 1962, others settled spontaneously, and some fled atrocities in 1959 and 1994. Most of those Rwandans never registered as refugees or even applied for citizenship; they were able to live their lives in the Kagera region.

The enormous number of refugees and the swelling camps, however, presented a burden to Tanzania that the country was not willing to shoulder any longer. Through UNHCR facilitated repatriation almost all Rwandan refugees from 1994 returned home, leaving behind a group of compatriots that did not necessarily want to return, but was also denied local integration in Tanzania.

The generation of leaders following Nyerere were less sympathetic to what they see as aliens on their soil. It is a general trend in Africa, whereby local integration as a durable solution has become less and less of an option.

Hence, now those old Rwandan refugees and at times migrants are effectively stateless. There might be solution in bringing them back to Rwanda, but this is a marginalized group of ethnic Banyarwandans that have no links with their country of origin any longer. It should also be noted that while repatriation from Tanzania was ongoing some Rwandan refugees moved across the border into Uganda to avoid repatriation. This is unlikely to be connected to the fear of prosecution for crimes against humanity, but rather it is a harbinger of the second level of complexity regarding Rwandan refugees - the complexity of repatriation.

The different backgrounds highlight that there is not one repatriation policy that will fit all. Whereas genocide perpetrators actively resist the idea of returning to a state run by the RPF and want to overthrow the current government of Rwanda still, many refugees in Uganda and Tanzania have concrete economic and security concerns that are diametrically opposed to those still in DRC.

There are three main reasons why Rwandan refugees are reluctant to return home. The first is the problematic process of unity and reconciliation; secondly, refugees might have little to strive for economically in a land that ranks 158 on the 2003 UNDP Human Development Index and which has a long way to go in terms of development and poverty reduction; lastly Rwanda is densely populated and fertile land is scarce, which some Malthusian scholars have attributed the origin of the genocide in the first place.

Unity and reconciliation is the explicit policy of the current Rwandan government and it is often juxtaposed with the South African model of truth and reconciliation. In Rwanda, amnesty is taboo and the government is adamant in fighting what it calls a “culture of impunity”. However, this process of justice is skewed in that it excludes RPA war crimes committed between 1990 and 1994. Thus only genocide is considered crime, which leads to a collective accusation of Hutus as a group and the victimisation of Tutsis as a whole. This precludes a genuine reconciliation effort. The same issue, namely that of RPA war crimes was what chased Carla Del Ponte from her position as chief prosecutor at the International War Crimes Tribunal (ICTR) in Arusha. This renders the process of bringing Rwandans back home more complex, as it is difficult to see how this represents a sustainable situation.

The problem of development is a serious one, in a country that has next to no natural resources, depleted land and no access to ports or main waterways. The donor presence in Kigali is impressive and many strategies are being devised, most recently the World Bank's Poverty Reduction Strategy Plan with distinct country ownership. However, the focus remains on a limited amount of clusters like coffee, tea and tourism. Evidently, those clusters are volatile and dependent on many factors that are largely beyond the reach of any Rwandan government.

In an economic situation like this, it is highly difficult to bring ever more Rwandans back not knowing how and where to fit them in. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of Rwandans are subsistence farmers. For some it could simply be more attractive to keep their livestock and stay put in places like Uganda and Tanzania.

Lastly, there is the issue of land, and anybody who has ever driven across the thousand hills of Rwanda cannot be but startled that wherever you look you will find houses or settlements. The population density with 323 persons/km2 ranks among the highest in the world. The lack of land need not be the cause for another conflict, but it makes life upon return to Rwanda significantly more difficult. The double pressure of land degradation and growing population density has been pointed to repeatedly as a main impediment for development. Additionally, one has to take into account the population growth. According to UNFPA estimates, given the current birth rate, Rwanda will count roughly twice of today's population by 2050. This does not yet include the Rwandans that are due to return soon. The question any observer who knows Rwanda will have to wonder, “Where will they all live”? This prospect or absence thereof in terms of development contributes to the complexity of Rwandan refugees who are ultimately to become returnees.

In conclusion, Rwanda history is a history of fleeing and returning populations. Many different refugee groups have emerged over the course of the last five decades and continue to coexist and overlap. Rwandan refugees do not represent a coherent whole, but rather a sum of contradictory and at times antagonistic parts.

This complexity of the multi-facetted Rwandan refugee “community” is exacerbated by the future they will face. Should the UNHCR Executive Committee at some point vote in favour of the cessation clause, thereby withdrawing prima facie refugee status, the only real foreseeable option for the vast majority is indeed to return home. This is when the heterogeneous group of Rwandan refugees will face yet more complexities in trying to reconstruct and rebuild a nation. To overcome enormous developmental challenges such as reconciliation, development and access to land will be a highly complex process. But given Rwanda's history of in- and outflows of entire groups it is legitimate to ask where the “re” in “reconstruction” actually comes from. Ultimately, the construction of a Rwandan society without precedent in the land of the thousand hills is the consequence and combination of this two-fold complexity of Rwandan refugees.

* Volker Schimmel is UNHCR Reports Officer in Rwanda. The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of UNHCR.

* NOTE FOR EDITORS: Please note that this editorial was commissioned from the author for Pambazuka News. If you would like to use this article for your publication, please do so with 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 mountains are beguiling. Volcanic and tropical, they teem with life: bearded colobus, a hundred kinds of butterflies and twice as many tree species all in a space scarcely larger than Wales. Banana groves slide off the slopes into valleys deeply rutted by brick cutters and potato mounds. As the hills slip by it is tempting to forget the secrets they hold. But in Rwanda, forgetting is impossible.

This was my first trip in 'Africa,' as we from South Africa like to call the rest of our continent. I started in Kenya, confronting what my country tried for 350 years to separate itself from: the African experience. For years I had Kenyan and Ugandan acquaintances who made me feel guilty for the xenophobic tendencies of my countrymen. They reminded me constantly of the contributions and sacrifices their countries made to assist our struggle against apartheid. They said I should be grateful for their black governments. They made me, a black South African woman, feel as if I owed them something. Maybe I do.

Kenya and Uganda were moveable feasts: vibrant, sensuous, crumbling. Their bustling cities and broken roads played to the lighter emotions - curiosity, bemusement and, to a degree, affinity. But Rwanda was different. Against the chaos of Kenya and Uganda, there is a calm to Rwanda. Traffic moves at a seemingly different pace. The roads are smoother. Perhaps it is the eeriness of confronting a horrific past that is immediately, palpably present, but Rwanda feels more contemplative.

At any rate, certain parallels with my own country's experience are inescapable. Rwanda is about to commemorate 10 years since its previous government incited a frenzy of ethnic genocide that consumed an estimated 800,000 people. At that very horrible moment, thousands of kilometres to the south, we were counting down the final tense days to our first democratic election.

While we were dancing in the streets, Rwandans were hunting down their neighbours, their brothers, their own wives and children in the maize. While we held the world in rapture, the brave and powerful turned their gaze away from Rwanda.

On my first ride through Rwanda's countryside, celebrating a decade of democracy felt like desecrating the memory of the dead. Somehow, the hundreds of years of being described as sub-human, discriminated against, despised and abused that my people suffered paled in significance to the 100 days of horror that Rwandans experienced.

Sitting on the bus, I felt I had intruded on a private affair. I could never pretend to understand the pain of those in the seats next to me. I am fortunate. The closest I ever came to the atrocities of the apartheid era was when people came forward at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to recount their stories of loss and suffering.

After a decade of democracy, we in South Africa are shielded by a veil - a strong and encompassing constitution that makes it slightly easier to pretend that apartheid is dead and buried. But in Rwanda that veil does not exist. It is no longer official policy in Rwanda to label people Hutu or Tutsi, to force them to carry identification cards the way the apartheid governments made us carry passes. But there is nothing to soothe the fears of ordinary Rwandans.

The drive from Katuna border post to Kigali took about an hour, and in that time I tried to concentrate on the present - the amazing slopes, the cool mountain air. But the past kept filtering through. I couldn't help wondering what secrets lived in the hills. As we neared the capital, one of my travel companions asked me what I would like to see in his city. I couldn't say what I wanted to: the genocide memorials. I wasn't sure if I could say the 'g-word' out loud in a bus loaded with Rwandans, so I just smiled and looked out the window.

As the road made a final descent into Kigali, my other companion, also Rwandan, tugged at my sleeve and said: 'Genocide.' For a horrible second I thought we had stumbled upon a fresh outbreak of violence. His half-smile told me otherwise. Off to the right stood a genocide memorial. That simple gesture broke the ice for me. I understood that I could satisfy my curiosity openly without inciting anyone.

On my second day in the country, we drove south from Kigali to Gitarama province where some of the worst of the killing occurred. Our first stop was a memorial in the district of Kibagali, where human skulls and bones were neatly stacked on glass shelves - the silent, faceless remnants of husbands, wives and children.

Later that day, we attended a preliminary hearing of a gacaca, a traditional court where perpetrators and victims resolve their differences before the community and a panel of eminent persons. Rwanda has revived gacacas - the word literally means 'in the grass' - in a national experiment in social healing and reconciliation.

About 60 residents congregated under a few trees in an open patch of ground next to some houses. Sixteen people sat in judgment. As my companions and I found comfortable spots in the field, the chairman of the panel called out a name of a victim. He asked if anyone gathered there knew how the man had died. Silence. No hand went up. Finally, one of the panellists stood up in anger and said it was impossible that no one had witnessed the killing. She knew, she said, specific people present at the sitting who should have seen the incident.

Provoked by further silence, she gave her own chilling account of how dogs were set on the victim, chasing him through the village until he finally lost the fight for his life. She then pointed out an elderly man sitting under one of the trees as having witnessed the chase. She accused the elderly man, describing how he continued harvesting beans as the horrific drama unfolded nearby.

Dispassionately, the old man acknowledged that he had been tending his garden at the time in question, but said he did not see anything. I was stunned. Such passivity is incomprehensible, even when you come from a country where crowds once gathered to watch gruesome killings perpetrated in the guise of mob justice.

Across Rwanda, billboards promoting gacaca proclaim: 'The truth heals. Let's tell what we saw, let's confess to what we did. This will heal us.' I wonder. The success of the gacaca system heavily relies on people volunteering information, being honest about what they did and what they saw.

It was the same in South Africa. We offered amnesty - immunity from prosecution - in exchange for the truth. By trading stories - what we did, or what we endured - we hoped to find reconciliation. Who can yet say if it has worked? Our society is still fragile and fragmented. Who can say if it will work in Rwanda?

The reality of this country is that many ordinary people were incited by the government to kill and there is not enough time to try them all or space to imprison them. But how do you learn to trust a man who picks beans while his neighbours are slaughtered? How do you greet him in the marketplace? Will confessions and finger-pointing in open-air tribunals enable Rwandans, the most Roman Catholic of Africans, to forgive 'until seventy times seven?'

A few days later, once again at the Katuna border, I crossed back into Uganda riding on a boda boda, a bicycle taxi, whizzing past travellers who had left me in the immigration queue. As the cyclist picked his way through the clog of people and cars, trying his best to avoid the bumps and potholes on the road, I thought of Rwanda's own uncertain road to recovery. The obstacles they face are revenge and resentment. Ten years after the killing, the country's name is still synonymous with genocide.

Perhaps, though, if Rwandans steer their course as we in South Africa did ours, the hills of their homeland may in time reveal a new story: a tale of hope.

* This article first appeared in the March 2004 issue of eAfrica: The Electronic Journal of Governance and Innovation, an online monthly journal published by the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg. eAfrica can be found on

Justice and reconciliation are concepts difficult to define, let alone achieve. What may seem 'just' for a community or a country, may be very unjust for the individual victim. There seems to be a tension between reconciliation, implying a kind of moral compromise, and justice in the strict, Western, prosecutorial sense it is usually used.

In the wake of violence on a societal scale, finding the right balance between justice and reconciliation, or between retribution and forgiveness, is an extremely delicate process and this is all the more so in cases of genocide. In the Great Lakes region, where today's oppressors tend to perceive themselves as yesterday's victims, justice and reconciliation become even more subjective and difficult goals.

In Rwanda, the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) dominated Government of National Unity is prioritising, as its name implies, the reconciliation of its citizens chiefly through a prosecutorial (trial-based) approach. However, since 1998 there has been a recognition among the highest Government echelons that working with a penal and legal system that is completely overstretched - at the beginning of 2003, there were an estimated 115,000 prisoners in Rwandan jails and communal lockups (cachots) - will require some innovative thinking and a move away from the 'white man's' standards of justice. This is why the much talked about gacaca traditional conflict resolution mechanism was adapted and revived.

Moves Towards Justice - Arrests, Courts, Trials and the legacy of genocide:

Despite the opening of a press office in Rwanda and the establishing of some important precedents in international criminal law, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda's (ICTR) contribution to justice and reconciliation within the country is very limited.

Domestically, the ICTR's work remains virtually unknown and when it is, the Tribunal's reputation may have been irreparably damaged by early scandals regarding endemic corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency.

The Tribunal's relationship with the Government itself has been a tormented one; the ICTR's mandate covers the period of January to December 1994, during which RPF soldiers allegedly carried out several massacres. The ICTR's insistence that these crimes should be investigated led to moral outrage from the RPF leadership, accusing the Court of putting the RPF on the same level as the génocidaires.

Rwanda's national courts operate in parallel with the ICTR. From having a rumoured 10 lawyers left in the country, no equipment, damaged buildings and no money to pay their staff in 1994, the national courts had by early 2004 tried upwards of 5,500 individuals. Though many of the early trials were severely flawed, the national legal system's performance arguably did more to restore some kind of confidence that (some) perpetrators were being brought to trial - by comparison, the ICTR and its hundreds of staff and multi-million dollar annual budgets had at the beginning of 2004 completed 18 cases and arrested 66 individuals.

Even at this accelerated pace, it was thought that the Rwandan formal judicial system would require more than a century to process the hundred thousand plus detainees. The adaptation of a traditional, grass roots conflict resolution mechanism - the gacaca tribunals - represents an affordable and expedient alternative. After a pilot phase, deemed a success by the Government, gacaca courts are due to open across the country in 2004.

Innovative Thinking - Justice and Reconciliation combined through the gacaca courts:

The goal of gacaca is to promote reconciliation through providing a platform for victims to express themselves, encouraging acknowledgements and apologies from the perpetrators, facilitating the coming together of both victims and perpetrators every week on the grass. Gacaca courts are also empowered to hand down sentences that include community work schemes that can directly benefit the most destitute families of victims. While gacaca is a potential source of 'truth' on how the genocide was implemented, its provisions for confessions and guilt pleas represent one of gacaca's most cited shortcomings.

Under these provisions, if someone confesses before being denounced, he or she is liable for a substantial decrease in the length of the sentence. Importantly, confessions are only acceptable if they include the incrimination of one's co-conspirators.

Some argue that this system of confessions creates rife conditions for vendetta-settling. Others estimate that an additional 200,000 people could see themselves imprisoned for genocide-related crimes. Others still say that intimidation of potential witnesses is widespread in the countryside in particular, where perpetrators presumably far outnumber survivors. Lastly, participation in gacaca is mandatory, implying that subsistence farmers and petty traders must give up a day of labour per week (on average) with no compensation in cash or kind; this mandatory character has fomented some resentment about gacaca.

Despite what may seem like insurmountable problems, gacaca represents the only workable solution for bringing those responsible for atrocities to trial promptly. It is difficult to judge the public perception of the gacaca tribunals. Presumably, Rwanda's tens of thousands of prisoners would favour a system that would help speed up their hearings. Also presumably, survivors would want to see perpetrators punished, and in the spirit of 'restorative' justice, may welcome replacing long prison sentences with more useful community work schemes. Having said that, the genocide survivor organisations remain extremely apprehensive of gacaca.

The real test will be when the tribunals begin working nationwide this year. If judges are incompetent or biased, if communities conspire to silence a witness, or if gacaca is used as a means to settle scores, neither justice nor reconciliation will be served.

Other Measures promoting Reconciliation: The National Unity and Reconciliation Commission (NURC)

Since its inception in 1999, the NURC has organised conferences and workshops on the theme of unity and reconciliation, culminating in two national summits, where Rwandans from all levels of society were represented. The NURC has also held workshops for segments of the population attending 'civic re-education' or 'solidarity' camps (ingandos) - such as provisionally released prisoners and demobilised soldiers (from the national army as well as from ex-FAR and interahamwe combatants repatriated from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)). Despite the NURC's all-encompassing mandate, it is still perceived as being an instrument of the central authorities and as being too 'vertical' in its activities, not doing enough grass roots work on 'the hills'.

Collective Memory:

Monuments and memorials are institutional embodiments of collective memory and as such, part of the reconciliation process. In Rwanda, genocide memorials pepper the country and new ones continue to be created. Often memorials are housed in churches - sites of many group massacres. Another institution created to foster collective memory is the national day of mourning for the victims of the genocide. The month of April more generally is considered to be a month of mourning and parties or celebrations of any kind are discouraged.

It is insightful to reflect on how different groups interpret these memorials and annual mourning periods. Some Rwandans consider the national day of mourning in particular as an obstacle to unity perhaps implicitly taking the view that forgetting the past is the best way to 'move on'. But if those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, then memory may be the best safeguard against a recurrence of violence. Others see the annual periods of mourning as a 'Tutsi affair', claiming that the commemorations are only for Tutsi victims, the moderate Hutu who perished in 1994 having been forgotten. They touch upon an important issue, to which we now turn.

The Challenges Victor's justice? Are the Hutu being collectively stigmatised?

There is a real danger that the RPF are, or will come to be, perceived as a party run by, and for, les Ougandais - an inner circle of Anglophone Tutsi refugees born in Uganda. In light of this, and despite the official party line that all citizens of Rwanda are Banyarwanda ('not Tutsi, nor Hutu, nor Twa') and therefore equal before the law, many Hutu may feel that the justice being meted out is a form of victor's justice.

The official refusal to recognise alleged (Hutu) victims of RPF atrocities in Rwanda and Eastern DRC in particular buttress such feelings. And because the national courts, and presumably this will hold true for the gacaca tribunals and the ICTR as well, are focusing 'punishment' on the Hutu, the judiciary's impartiality is also called into question. (Similar accusations of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia being a form of victors' justice ring true to the ears of an important proportion of Serb public opinion.)

This resentment of 'Tutsi impunity' is visible in, for example, the joke that the ICTR, whose French acronym is the TPIR, should be renamed the TPIH - le tribunal pénal international des Hutus. By leaving these allegations unresolved, the RPF leaves itself open to the possibility that political opponents will inflate the size and nature of RPF abuses.

Lastly, the unspoken assumption that all Hutu who opposed the genocide were killed in 1994, and thus that the Hutu who were in the country during those months and alive today are morally, if not legally, responsible also undermines justice and national reconciliation: can such a project succeed on the basis of such distrust?

Poverty:

In 2002, Rwanda's GDP grew by 9.7%, ranking it among the top three performers in sub-Saharan Africa for that year. Yet according to Government figures, approximately 60% of Rwandans live on less than US$1 per day and the United Nations Development Programme ranked Rwanda 162nd out of 173 countries in its 2002 Human Development Index.

It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of poverty in Rwanda. In a country where 94% of the population live in rural areas, there is also a 'mental' distance between the urban elite in Kigali and the peasants 'on the hills'.

Rural Rwanda has not been actively engaged in justice and reconciliation debates - though this may change with the gacaca tribunals. As in South Africa, where victims of apartheid are calling for reparations for the legacy of 'economic apartheid', the most destitute genocide widows and orphans - for whom the legacy of 1994 is also, in a very immediate sense, socio-economic - have been benefiting from the Fond National pour l'Assistance aux Rescapés du Génocide (the FARG) created in 1998.

Importantly, this assistance goes only to Tutsi, as the genocide was against the Tutsi and so they are the only ones to qualify as survivors (rescapés). This helps reinforce the perception of victors' justice, mentioned earlier, among Hutu families that may have also lost family members or had property confiscated or destroyed.

A direct economic consequence of gacaca, if it is successful in alleviating the burden on the penal system, will be that thousands of (Hutu) families will no longer have to struggle to feed potentially productive members of their family that have been in jail for up to ten years, with an unknown proportion of them having been falsely accused to begin with.

If grinding poverty contributed to the ease with which the peasant masses where mobilised for the genocidal project, then ensuring that rural Rwanda is not excluded from the benefits of economic growth will not only serve the obvious purpose of improving the quality of life of millions, it will also help prevent the despair, humiliation and feelings of exclusion that contribute to the cycles of violence in the Great Lakes region and to the dynamics of genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

Debating Rwanda's Histories:

A telling indicator for how much Rwanda has moved towards national reconciliation is the fact that since 1994, no history lessons have been taught in Rwandan schools. There has thus been no debate in the public domain about why the 1994 genocide happened. This is important because one cannot say much about the prospects of reconciliation without first reflecting on exactly what it is that gives rise to demands for it. What motivated such large parts of the population to participate? If some were coerced into killing, why were some others such zealous, innovative and cruel killers?

The Government of National Unity's project of creating an all-inclusive Rwandan nationalism around the 'Banyarwanda' label relies on achieving a broad-based consensus among Rwandans that justice has been served. Can this be achieved without a reconciliation with history?

Conclusion:

Rwandans have come a long way since 1994. Above and beyond their individual struggles with their very personal experiences of genocide, Rwandans have had to contend with periods of renewed insecurity in the North-West of the country, worrying escalations of violence in Burundi (the Rwandan 'Siamese twin'), a war in neighbouring DRC, severe deterioration of relations with Uganda, the repatriation of some 2 million refugees since 1994, and a general loss of interest in the international media and the international community.

Perhaps of more immediate relevance for the 94% of Rwandans who live in rural areas, pockets of droughts and food insecurity have been periodic and the very real daily struggle for survival continues unabated. In this context of grinding poverty, 'justice and reconciliation' perversely become a luxury. Projects to foster unity need to become more relevant to rural Rwandans in order to become more effective. Only then can Rwandans afford to start thinking about justice and reconciliation. The government also needs to recognise that a vibrant and independent civil society and media is not a potential threat but a sustainable, countervailing force should there be attempts to foment a new cycle of violence, for which the Great Lakes region is tragically infamous.

* Eugenia Zorbas worked in Rwanda for one year in 2002/3 and has since returned to academia as a PhD student in the Development Studies Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science, with a research focus on post-genocide reconciliation debates in Rwanda.

* NOTE FOR EDITORS: Please note that this editorial was commissioned from the author for Pambazuka News. If you would like to use this article for your publication, please do so with the following credit: "This article first appeared in Pambazuka News, an electronic newsletter for social justice in Africa, www.pambazuka.org". Editors are also encouraged to make a donation.

1. WHY WE MUST NEVER FORGET THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE

Why should the world bother to remember the Rwandan genocide? Isn't it something we should rather seek to forget? GERALD CAPLAN outlines the powerful case for why the genocide should not be forgotten at any cost, looking at the collective responsibility of humanity and the complicity of the West in turning a blind eye to the 100 days of massacre that took place in 1994.

http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=21165

2. TOWARDS JUSTICE AND RECONCILIATION IN RWANDA: TAKING STOCK

“How can I forgive, when my livelihood was destroyed and I cannot even pay for the schooling of my children,” asks a widowed Rwandan woman taking part in a reconciliation workshop. EUGENIA ZORBAS looks at the progress towards reconciliation in Rwanda, examining the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, gacaca courts, issues of collective memory and the dangers of victor’s justice.

http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=21166

3. SAFE SANCTUARY?: THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH IN GENOCIDE

Traditionally seen as places of sanctuary during times of turmoil, churches became the scene of some of the most haunting massacres of the Rwandan genocide. CAMILLE KARANGWA charts the complicity of the church in the time period up to and including the 100 days of killings in 1994 and concludes that it would be foolish not to acknowledge serious failings.

http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=21192

4. CHILDREN OF RWANDA: THE LEGACY OF GENOCIDE, THE FUTURE OF RWANDA

In the language and logic of genocide, exterminating the “big rats” also meant exterminating the “little rats”. SARA RAKITA examines the legacy of the genocide for Rwanda’s children and concludes that more can and must be done to help them.

http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=21167

5. A SEAT IN THE GRASS

LULEKA MANGQUKU, a South African woman, catches a bus through Rwanda, attends a gacaca trial and contemplates the aftermath of genocide. Drawing parallels with South Africa’s 10 years of democracy celebrations, she asks the question: “Will confessions and finger-pointing in open-air tribunals enable Rwandans, the most Roman Catholic of Africans, to forgive ‘until seventy times seven?’”

http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=21168

6. WHY? HOW? SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS IN THE DIASPORA

Watching the genocide from their TV sets in the West, members of the African Diaspora demanded answers to the why and the how of what was taking place. But there can be no answers to this unspeakable horror, says VINCENT GASANA, and the best that can be done is to understand the circumstances surrounding the genocide.

http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=21169

7. WHY DOES GENOCIDE ‘HAPPEN’?

The immediate terror of genocide gives the impression that it is an inexplicable mass crime of passion sparked by a single event, such as the shooting down of the plane that killed the Rwandan head of state in 1994. Nothing could be further from the truth, states ROTIMI SANKORE. Genocide has clear economic, social and political indicators that are identifiable long before the killing starts. The challenge is therefore to rid the world of the injustices on which genocide is built.

http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=21207

8. MIRRORING RWANDA’S CHALLENGES: THE REFUGEE STORY

Millions of people scattered across the African continent and the world in the aftermath of the genocide. Meeting the needs of those returning has been a huge challenge that is not yet resolved. SARAH ERLICHMAN explains how the welfare of Rwanda’s refugees is integrally linked to the political and social-economic future of the country.

http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=21170

9. FIVE DECADES OF FLEEING AND RETURNING PEOPLE

A decade after the genocide, the problem of Rwanda’s refugees persists. But while refugees may remain reluctant to return home because of apprehension about unity and reconciliation, economic problems and scarce land, the construction of a healthy society in the country of a thousand hills will depend on a resolution of the refugee crisis, writes VOLKER SCHIMMEL.

http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=21171

10. NEUTRALISING THE VOICES OF HATE: BROADCASTING AND GENOCIDE

Silencing the voices of hate does not involve draconian hate speech laws or international military action. Rather, argues RICHARD CARVER, the Rwandan experience shows that the solution to hate speech is to entrench freedom of expression.

http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=21172

11. TEN LESSONS TO PREVENT GENOCIDE

In the ten years since the Rwandan genocide leaders of national governments and international institutions have acknowledged the shame of having failed to stop the slaughter of the Tutsi population. At the 2004 Stockholm International Forum, “Preventing Genocide: Threats and Responsibilities,” many renewed their commitment to halting any future genocide. Honouring that pledge will require not just greater political will than seen in the past but also developing a strategy built on the lessons of 1994. ALISON DES FORGES provides ten lessons for preventing genocide.

http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=21173

* PLEASE SEND YOUR COMMENTS ON ANY OF THESE EDITORIALS TO [email protected]

* Edited by Firoze Manji and Patrick Burnett. We would like to extend our thanks to the contributors, who have freely given of their time and energy.

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This report, by Human Rights Watch, explores the human rights situation of child soldiers in Liberia through a series of interviews with former and current child soldiers undertaken in the country in late 2003. The report argues that approximately 15,000 boys and girls under the age of eighteen, some as young as nine and ten years old, were involved in the fighting in Liberia. Since the enforced ceasefire of August 2003, an extensive demobilisation program which includes specific provisions for child soldiers, has been put in place. The rehabilitation of child soldiers, however, remains an enormous challenge: whole communities have been destroyed; populations have been displaced; and many children have lost one or more family members.

This year is the 10th Anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. An international campaign is underway to mobilise to mark this anniversary - "REMEMBERING RWANDA". Next week your usual Pambazuka News will be substituted with a special issue on Rwanda that will contain originally commissioned editorials covering key issues relating to Rwanda and the genocide.

In January 2004, Monsanto, a multinational agribusiness company, quit Zimbabwe because of what it called “poor economic conditions”. On 19 January 2004, Monsanto SA (Pty) Ltd revealed that it had applied for a food and feed safety clearance in South Africa for its genetically modified (GM) Roundup Ready wheat.

Such a clearance would mean that future importers of the GM wheat would not need to obtain import permits, more seriously it would mean that importers do not have to comply with bio-safety rules. On 9 March 2004, UK’s Environment Secretary, Margaret Beckett announced that UK ministers had agreed in principle to the growing of a single variety of GM maize in England. This agreement comes after five years of intensive national debate in which more than 50% of the Britons who participated said ‘NO’ to the introduction of GM crops.

There is no doubt that the push for genetically modified food is coming from big business. While previously the cry was that GM products would widen consumer choice, now the lie is been peddled that GM crops and seed are good because they will help developing countries deal with hunger. Multi-national agribusiness companies have been at pains to display their credentials of feeding a hungry world. If the aim of big agribusiness companies like Monsanto is to feed the hungry, why would it withdraw from a country like Zimbabwe where over 40% of the population need food aid?

The point must be made that far from dealing with hunger, GM crops could worsen it. Through patenting seeds, multinational agribusiness companies will establish a monopoly on food production. Because of advancement in technology, these companies can manufacture seeds that will not grow without patented chemicals. Seeds can also be created in such a way that they cannot reproduce. This would do much harm to farmers, indigenous people and local communities, in terms of their rights and interests, including the right to use, save and exchange seeds and other biological resources.

Much of what has been touted as development has failed to bring happiness and social justice to the majority of peoples of the world. In many countries particularly in the developing countries people are deprived of natural resources that constitute the bedrock of their lives. Agriculture is an extremely important sector in Africa, as it provides food and livelihood for its people and is the backbone of African economies. There seems to be no overwhelming benefit of GM crops other than profit for transnationals.

In South Africa, social movements are strongly opposing the granting of a commodity clearance permit that would allow the US firm Monsanto to import genetically modified wheat into their country. This is a legitimate concern because South Africa risks becoming a dumping ground for GM crops. Africa should be on guard not to fall for the marketing charm of companies like Monsanto who will go all out to open new markets in the continent.

No doubt Africa will be told that allowing companies like Monsanto to establish businesses in the continent will encourage foreign direct investment. This is exactly the kind of foreign direct investment that Africa should not accept because it will harm the continent’s bio-diversity and communal ownership agreed under the Convention on Bio-Diversity.

There is need to be ever sensitive to the issue of appearance versus reality. Those who have ever watched a magician’s show will know how the success of the show is determined by the extent to which the magician has mastered the art of deception through distracting attention. The magician misdirects with one hand while the other hand does the tricks.

Those who support GM crops have become magicians. They say GM crops will reduce world poverty and hunger. When this argument is questioned they change tune and say we shouldn’t worry about GM crops because most of them are being grown to feed livestock rather than people. As if to appease us we are further told that GM crops will be grown and managed under conditions that will not harm people and the environment.

In the interests of justice and morality we must ignore the magician’s tricks and demand to have a look at his other hand - the hand that is always under the table. It is the hand under the table that is pushing small farmers out of business. It is the hand under the table that is seeking to establish food monopolies. It is the hand under the table that is threatening traditional food industries. We should not allow a situation that reduces peoples livelihoods to a magic show.

Embracing GM crops unquestioningly is to attach our livelihoods to the markets. It is to disregard recognition of and provision for, the rights of farmers, indigenous people and local communities, in relation to their knowledge and biological resources.

* Percy Makombe is the Assistant Editor of the SEATINI Bulletin, in which this commentary first appeared. For more information and subscriptions, contact SEATINI, Takura House, 67-69 Union Avenue, Harare, Zimbabwe, Tel: +263 4 792681, Ext. 255 & 341, Tel/Fax: +263 4 251648, Fax: +263 4 788078, email:
Email: [email][email protected], Website: www.seatini.org

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Experts from the World Health Organisation and the African Union are scheduled to meet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in April, to discuss how countries in Africa can decrease maternal and newborn mortality rates, the highest in the world. According to WHO regional director Ebrahim Samba, the maternal mortality ratio in Africa has increased from 870 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 1,000 deaths in 2001.

The challenge within the theme of political justice is essentially how do we democratise democracy, this was said by the CIVICUS Secretary General Kumi Naidoo. Naidoo was speaking at the opening session of the plenary meeting of CIVICUS held in Gaborone. “Despite the rise in institutionalisation of elections around the world, democracy is in deep crisis and its quality has not improved,” Kumi Naidoo said.

Dr Prega Ramsamy, Executive Secretary of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) on 23 March 2004 has reaffirmed civil society's vital role in efforts at regional integration. He has highlighted SADC's commitment to a partnership with civil society, to find lasting solutions to the development needs in southern Africa, writes Nombuso Dlamini in Botswana.

Civil society in Zimbabwe on Monday condemned a move by the government to amend the Electoral Act, saying the amendment would undermine next year's parliamentary elections. "The planned changes to the Electoral Act will result in the tightening of the operations of the government-appointed Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC) and unless there are fundamental changes to the process of holding elections, next year's elections would be easily declared not free and fair," chairman of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), Reginald Matchaba-Hove, told IRIN.

The World Bank this week denied criticism that its policies had limited the capacity of governments to provide adequate social services to people in developing countries. Addressing delegates at the biennial world assembly of CIVICUS, an umbrella body of civic organisations, in Botswana on Tuesday, Bank Vice President Ian Goldin noted that the institution was the largest single source of outside funding for education, health and the prevention of HIV/AIDS. But critics of the Banks policies remain unconvinced. The Asian Director of Action Aid International, John Samuel, told IRIN: "In spite of progressive rhetoric, the Bank still pursues the neo-liberal agenda of the United States of America and the rich countries."

The EU will give aid to the Central African Republic (CAR) after it holds fair and democratic general elections, the head of the EU delegation in the CAR, Joseph Loveras, said on Wednesday. State-owned Radio Centrafrique reported that Loveras made the remarks when he met CAR Vice-President Abel Goumba in the capital, Bangui. Loveras was quoted as saying that the EU would only support specific social and humanitarian projects in the CAR during the transitional period, scheduled to end in early 2005.

Humanitarian issues occupied a large portion of Finance Minister Majozi Sithole's 2004 budget, which was presented to the parliament of Swaziland on Wednesday. "Issues of social inequities and good governance have to be addressed," Sithole told MPs as he described the requirements for attracting the investment that could bring much needed employment and poverty relief.

The opposition in the Ivory Coast is gearing up for an anti-government march on the commercial capital, Abidjan. It decided to go ahead with the rally after last-ditch mediation talks with Ghana's President, John Kufuor, failed to resolve a growing political crisis.