Protegido: How Far Will Rwanda Go in Congo?
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Ruanda
Rwanda Keeps Getting Away With Sowing Chaos in Congo
Since 1996, war in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has claimed millions of lives. The recurring violence is often described as a mere byproduct of regional instability or casually dismissed as “ethnic conflict”, even by elder African statesmen. These characterizations miss a crucial truth: the deliberate, long-term strategy employed by Rwanda to keep its resource-rich neighbor perpetually weak.
For nearly three decades, Rwandan autocrat Paul Kagame has masterfully played a double game: presenting his regime to the world—and particularly Western donors and institutions—as a beacon of development and stability while systematically undermining the stability and territorial integrity of Congo, its direct neighbor to the west.… Seguir leyendo »
Modern-day gold rush in North Kivu: what the law can do
On 27 January 2025, Rwandan-backed M23 soldiers seized the Congolese city of Goma. This expands Rwanda’s control in Congo, which now includes most of the province of North Kivu with the possibility of deeper incursions. Goma is home to two million people, one million of whom are internally displaced from other areas of conflict. The fighting has brought scores of deaths as well as extensive and pervasive sexual violence in what the UN and others label a devastating humanitarian catastrophe. Observers warn that we may be witnessing the beginning of another massive central African war.
Violence in Africa is often wrongly discounted as local, organic and/or inexplicable.… Seguir leyendo »
Rwanda’s Undemocratic Election
This July, Rwanda will conduct its presidential election—an event that should represent a celebration of democratic principles. Instead, it already promises to entrench the persistent suppression of opposition voices by the current government in Rwanda. As a victim of this suppression, I find myself once again barred from participating in an electoral process that I, as a Rwandan, have a right to take part in.
In January 2010, after 16 years in exile, I returned to Rwanda, hopeful and determined to contribute to the country’s political landscape through peaceful and democratic change. My intention was to register my political party and run for president in the elections scheduled for later that year.… Seguir leyendo »
My Story Was Told in ‘Hotel Rwanda.’ Here’s What I Want the World to Know Now.
This week, the world will again turn its eyes toward Rwanda. April 6 marks 30 years since the start of one of the most horrific events in modern history, the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Nearer in time but not unrelated, it has been just over one year since I left Rwanda and returned to the United States, released from prison after 939 days in captivity.
I have not yet spoken at length about what those years in a Rwandan prison were like, or about the daily reality for Rwandan political prisoners who, like me, found themselves behind bars for exercising their freedom of expression.… Seguir leyendo »
America Must Act to Prevent a Rwanda-Congo War
In the summer of 2022, I crossed from Rwanda into the besieged Congolese city of Goma. The slick Rwandan border police and their Chinese-made black polymer carbines stood in stark contrast to the weary Congolese soldiers’ ancient Kalashnikovs. “We can’t invade Rwanda or Uganda”, a hardened Congolese provincial politician admitted to me. He slid his fingers across his neck, adding, “But we can’t negotiate with a knife to our throat”.
Since that conversation, Rwandan troops and their local March 23 Movement (M23) proxy forces have completely encircled Goma. While the Rwandan government simultaneously denies supporting M23 while justifying its intervention as necessary for Rwandan security, the direct involvement of Rwanda has been extensively documented by the United Nations and acknowledged with alarm by the U.S.… Seguir leyendo »
Protegido: Kagame’s Revenge
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10 Conflicts to Watch in 2023. Democratic Republic of Congo and the Great Lakes
M23, a previously dormant rebel group, which UN reports suggest is backed by Rwanda, is wreaking havoc in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Fighting has driven tens of thousands of people from their homes and could spiral into a wider regional proxy war.
M23 holds several towns and surrounds the provincial capital of Goma. In 2013, the group was beaten back by a ramped-up UN force but now appears well-armed and organised. It includes ex-Congolese soldiers, many of whom are Tutsis, an ethnic group spread across Africa’s Great Lakes, and profess to champion communal interests.
M23’s sudden re-emergence owes as much to tensions among Great Lakes states as it does to local dynamics.… Seguir leyendo »
Inside the prison where sunlight ceases to exist
In the recent race to become Britain’s next Conservative Party leader and prime minister, there was one item the final candidates all agreed on – sticking with a controversial plan to send asylum seekers arriving on their shores halfway across the world to Rwanda.
Just a few weeks into the top job, freshly anointed prime minister Liz Truss doesn’t appear to be changing course anytime soon. (The closest the plan came to happening was in June, when a plane of asylum seekers set for Rwanda was grounded following a last-minute injunction by the European Court of Human Rights).
Now, as the British government faces legal challenges to the scheme from campaign groups representing asylum seekers, renewed focus has turned to Rwanda’s human rights record – including its imprisonment of political opponents.… Seguir leyendo »
The UK’s view of Rwanda is deeply ignorant – I once fell prey to it myself
It’s easy to fall prey to misconceptions about Rwanda. I’ve done so myself while writing about the small country – about twice the size of Yorkshire – to which we are dispatching our “migrant problem”. With flights to Kigali imminent, and the president, Paul Kagame, proposing alleged UK-based “génocidaires” be extradited to face trial, I wonder if we really understand what we’re getting into.
Faults in Priti Patel’s policy should not need rehearsing. Yet so great is western ignorance and amnesia about Rwanda (and the wider Great Lakes region of Africa) that the arguments against require reinforcement. For there has, since the genocide, been a “blank ahistoricism” about the country, as the Rwanda expert Michela Wrong has put it.… Seguir leyendo »
Why Britain’s deal with Rwanda on migrants is so repulsive
We knew the global refugee system was broken. But Britain, with Rwanda’s help, wants to smash it with a hammer.
British Home Secretary Priti Patel last week announced a plan to fly migrants and asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing and resettlement, this being the Johnson government’s answer to the thousands who have lately arrived across the English Channel from mainland Europe. For its trouble, Rwanda would get around $157 million for housing, job training and other services. Patel termed this a “joint new migration and economic development partnership.“
That’s a very posh way of saying: We are going to pay a poorer country to take human beings we don’t want.… Seguir leyendo »
Many Afghan refugees are finding home again. That’s reason to give thanks
I got the call in the evening, as the sun was going down over Rwanda: President Paul Kagame wants to meet you. Tomorrow. Please take a PCR test in the morning. You’ll meet the president in his office at 2 p.m.
Wonderful, I thought. There’s so much I want him to know. I started lining up anecdotes in my mind, stories that would highlight the extraordinary reception the Rwandan people have given every single member of SOLA, my Afghan girls’ school, since our arrival here in August. I wanted to speak about kindness, and sensitivity, and humanity.
And I decided the best way to do this was to tell him: Rwandans are merciless on the soccer field.… Seguir leyendo »
Donors are cutting food aid for refugees in Rwanda. That’s devastating for people unable to work
The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR, or United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) and World Food Programme recently announced 60 percent cuts to food assistance for refugees in Rwanda. Funding shortages resulting from decades-long refugee hosting, compounded by covid-19 demands, have left the government of Rwanda and humanitarian agencies no choice but to prioritize who will continue to receive assistance.
The last time this happened, in 2018, two successive cuts in food rations led to a protest by 3,000 residents of the Kiziba refugee camp. Security forces dispersed the crowds, killing at least five refugees and injuring 20. More than 20 community leaders of the camp were imprisoned.… Seguir leyendo »
Rwanda’s government now uses the annual genocide remembrance as a political tool
In the aftermath of a violent civil war that culminated in a 100-day genocide in 1994, Rwanda effectively outlawed ethnicity. Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president since 2000 — who is credited with ending the genocide — instituted an official policy of ethnic nonrecognition in the country in 2003. Under this mandate, the population rallies around a motto of national homogeneity: Ndi Umunyarwanda (“We are all Rwandan”).
Each year on April 7, Rwanda begins Kwibuka — a 100-day remembrance period for the hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed by Hutu extremists. My research suggests Rwanda’s official commitment to Ndi Umunyarwanda disappears during Kwibuka.… Seguir leyendo »
America's disastrous love affair with Rwanda's Paul Kagame
Rwanda's journey from its 1994 genocide to a model of orderly developmen t made it a go-to country for those who want to invest in an African success story, taking in hundreds of millions in new overseas investments each year and making it one of corporate America's ideal places for charitable donations. But the love affair between the United States and Rwanda's hardline president Paul Kagame, should be seriously reconsidered after 27 years of systemic human rights abuses.
To name the alleged abuses is to name what's typical of despots everywhere: election-rigging, a captive judiciary, a well-oiled propaganda machine that silences truth, and the assassination of opposition leaders, journalists, and regime critics at home and abroad.… Seguir leyendo »
Comunicación, salud pública y justicia social
La pandemia de COVID‑19 ha demostrado que la comunicación es un arma de doble filo. Es una de las herramientas más poderosas para cambiar conductas: puede crear conciencia y compasión en relación con la situación de grupos vulnerables, que son los más afectados durante las crisis; y combinada con una sólida agenda de equidad y un liderazgo creíble, puede impulsar acciones positivas e inclusivas. Pero mal usada (distorsionada por el prejuicio, la visión de corto plazo y el egoísmo) la comunicación puede ser un arma peligrosa.
Una comparación entre las respuestas a la COVID‑19 en el Reino Unido y en Ruanda permite ejemplificar esta dicotomía.… Seguir leyendo »
For the third time in 11 years, Rwanda changed the language used in primary schools
In December, Rwanda’s government announced that all Rwandan primary schools should teach in English, a language that many teachers in the country cannot understand or speak. This is the third time in 11 years that the government has introduced a major language shift. Education officials, donors and others are now scrambling to respond.
What’s behind these shifts in the language of instruction? And what are the wider implications? Here’s what you need to know.
1. Here’s what just changed
This new plan requires schools to teach in English starting in the first grade. Yet many primary schoolteachers in Rwanda don’t speak English — a 2018 study found that just 38 percent of those teachers likely to be affected by the new change have a working knowledge of English.… Seguir leyendo »
Tricky task for Belgian jurors to judge a Rwandan for genocide
Dark, cold and heavy clouds loom over foggy, grey Brussels. A large crowd stands in line to enter the old Justice Palace, which has been under reconstruction for a couple of years. An elderly Rwandan man, wearing a chic white trench coat, manoeuvres through the scaffolding and smoothly jumps the line. At 71, his pace is slow. He drags one of his feet. Supporting himself with a crutch in his right hand, he passes security and makes his way up the imposing stairway. His destination is a timeworn, dingy and dark courtroom. It is located at the outer wing of the historic Palace, which was inaugurated in 1883 by King Leopold II, infamous for his lethal colonial exploitation of the Congo Free State, today’s Democratic Republic of Congo.… Seguir leyendo »
Le modèle rwandais remet en lumière les questions sur le développement en Afrique
L’image que renvoie le Rwanda de nos jours est celle d’une Afrique qui gagne. Elle est de moins en moins celle, lugubre, d’amas de crânes témoins d’une humanité en mode off, mais plutôt celle, rayonnante, des inaugurations en cascade d’écoles à la pointe du numérique, d’une filiale de Volkswagen ou du lancement du premier smartphone complètement « made in Africa ». Quelles sont les principales caractéristiques du modèle rwandais de développement ? Quelles sont ses limites ? Que peut-on en dire concernant l’Afrique et la pensée sur le développement au XXIe siècle ?
Un grand malheur communGénéralement, ce qu’on entend par « nation » évoque des groupements humains qui partagent le même destin et la même volonté de poursuivre un pari sur l’avenir au sens de « projet de vie ».… Seguir leyendo »
L'Umuganura, une réconciliation rwandaise
Le vendredi 2 août 2019, les Rwandais ont célébré la fête de l’Umuganura. Les autorités éprouvent quelques difficultés à traduire ce terme : fête de la moisson, Fest-Food Festival, National Harvest Day, et même, influence américaine oblige, Thanksgiving Day.
Rituel ancienL’Umuganura est un très ancien rituel célébré chaque année dans une des cours royales itinérantes. Très complexe, il mettait en jeu toutes les catégories du pays autour de la sacralité de la personne du roi considéré comme le garant de la fertilité de la terre, de l’abondance des récoltes et de la fécondité des femmes et des vaches. Le long cérémonial de l’Umuganura est l’un des dix-sept rituels royaux dont les textes dactylographiés ont été fournis par un informateur anonyme, sans doute un ritualiste, en 1961, peu après le référendum qui abolissait la royauté (rituels pour l’avènement d’un nouveau roi, pour les funérailles, pour entrer en guerre, pour la chasse, pour faire tomber la pluie, etc.)… Seguir leyendo »