Rwanda: Lasting Wounds

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"The majority of Rwandan children have been victims of armed conflict.Thousands have been arbitrarily arrested and denied prompt access to justice.Hundreds of thousands more living around the country have been abused, exploited for their labor, exploited for their property, or denied the right to education.Thousands have migrated to city streets in an effort to escape these abuses only to find themselves vulnerable to harassment by Rwandan law enforcement agents."

I.Introduction

Rwanda's children have seen the worst of humanity. Eight years after a group of politicians set in motion a genocide in an attempt to retain power, the devastating consequences for those who were left behind are unmistakable.Traditional protective structures for children including family networks, the judicial system, and the education system have been torn apart.As a result, children-many of whom survived unspeakable atrocities-are still the victims of systematic human rights violations day in and day out.In the face of the daunting challenge of rebuilding a society devastated by both war and poverty, protecting their rights has been sidelined.But this does not do Rwanda's children justice.The Rwandan government can and must do more to break the cycle of abuse and exploitation that affects tens of thousands of Rwandan children.Failure to protect their human rights is creating a dangerous legacy for them, and for the future of Rwanda. (Human Rights Watch uses the term "child" to refer to all persons under the age of eighteen.)

Those who planned and executed the genocide of 1994 violated children's rights on a massive scale.Not only did they rape, torture, and slaughter children along with adults in massacre after massacre around the country.Carrying their genocidal logic to its absurd conclusion, they even targeted children for killing-to exterminate the "big rats," they said, one must also kill the "little rats."Countless thousands of children were murdered in the genocide and war.Many of those who managed to escape death had feared for their own lives, surviving rape or torture, witnessing the killing of family members, hiding under corpses, or seeing children killing other children.Some of these children now say they do not care whether they live or die.

Some five thousand people were arrested on charges they committed crimes of genocide before they reached the age of eighteen. Although they garner less sympathy, children who took part in the genocide are also victims.Their rights were first violated when adults recruited, manipulated, or incited them to participate in atrocities, and have been violated again by the Rwandan justice system. One boy who confessed and was convicted of genocide said he had been given a choice of killing his sister's children or being killed himself.He was sixteen years old at the time.Large numbers of these children were in fact arrested unjustly.Another boy, arrested at age thirteen after the genocide, confessed to having killed in order to escape torture, although he now maintains that his confession was false.He had just witnessed other detainees being tortured at the hands of Rwandan government soldiers.His father, among others, had died as a result of torture the night before.He and a thousand others who were younger than fourteen in 1994, and thus too young to be held criminally responsible under Rwandan law, were freed after being transferred from detention facilities to reeducation camps in 2000 and 2001.The government had been promising to release them since 1995.

As many as four thousand children who were between fourteen and eighteen years old during the genocide continue to languish in overcrowded prisons. Their adolescence is gone.Despite repeated, hollow promises to give their cases priority within the over-burdened justice system, they have been subjected to the worst of a bad situation.Juvenile defendants have been tried at an even slower rate than adults.Few have enjoyed the right to adequate legal counsel and other due process protections guaranteed under Rwandan and international law.A few hundred, for whom prosecutors had not conducted investigations or made case files during their years of imprisonment, were provisionally released in 2001 after their neighbors cleared them of wrongdoing in public meetings.Ironically, now that the government has finally made some progress in dealing with the massive failures of the justice system-including organizing community-based courts to deal with the bulk of genocide cases and releasing most of those who had been below the age of criminal responsibility and some without case files-it has become even harder to draw attention to the thousands of young adults who remain in detention for crimes they allegedly committed as children."We feel that justice has left us," one of them told Human Rights Watch.

Perhaps the most devastating legacy of the genocide and war is the sheer number of children left on their own, and the government's failure to protect them from abuse and exploitation.On Rwanda's green hills, up to 400,000 children-10 percent of Rwandan children-struggle to survive without one or both parents.Children who were orphaned in the genocide or in war, children orphaned by AIDS, and children whose parents are in prison on charges of genocide, alike, are in desperate need of protection.Many Rwandans have exhibited enormous generosity in caring for orphans or other needy children.Yet, because so many Rwandans are living in difficult circumstances themselves, to some, vulnerable children are worth only their labor and their property.Foster families have taken needy children in, but some have also exploited them as domestic servants, denied them education, and unscrupulously taken over their family's land.Government officials have done little to protect these children's rights, instead trusting that extended families will care for them.But traditional societal networks have been severely eroded by poverty, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and, not least, the consequences of the genocide and war.
Thousands of children-many of whom had been exploited for their labor or their property and denied the right to education at home-have migrated to city streets to fend for themselves.There, they face a near constant risk of harassment by law enforcement officials and arbitrary arrest.Municipal authorities continue to round children up by force in an effort to "clean the streets," despite promises to direct their efforts at protecting the children without violating their rights.Girls living on the streets are frequently raped, sometimes even by law enforcement officials, yet few of those responsible have been prosecuted.

The international community has provided billions of dollars to assist in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Rwanda and continues to donate tens of millions of dollars each year.Yet inadequate resources have been devoted to address the desperate needs of child protection.Donors have failed to ensure that money earmarked for speedy trial of those accused of genocide as children, for example, is actually used for that purpose.Likewise, donors have failed to ensure that funds allocated to pay school tuition for orphans are distributed fairly.In addition, the donors have repeatedly failed to denounce blatant human rights violations such as forcible roundups and beatings of street children, and failed to use their leverage to stop such violations.

This report-based on hundreds of interviews conducted between 1995 and 2002 with children, child rights experts, social workers, representatives and staff of local and international organizations, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and officials of the Rwandan government-documents widespread violations of the rights of the child in post-genocide Rwanda.The majority of Rwandan children have been victims of armed conflict.Thousands have been arbitrarily arrested and denied prompt access to justice.Hundreds of thousands more living around the country have been abused, exploited for their labor, exploited for their property, or denied the right to education.Thousands have migrated to city streets in an effort to escape these abuses only to find themselves vulnerable to harassment by Rwandan law enforcement agents.

The Rwandan government can and must do more to protect their rights.The government claims to have embraced international standards and has put a partial legal framework for child protection in place.But laws are not enough without adequate enforcement mechanisms.Eight years of promises to protect their rights has meant little for children in practice.The government should take concrete measures to establish a system of juvenile justice in accordance with international standards.Officials at all levels must use their power to put a stop to the abuse and exploitation of children on the hills and on city streets.The future of Rwanda depends on it.

II.Recommendations

To the Rwandan Government:

The Government of Rwanda must strive to improve the protection of vulnerable children.The government cannot condone widespread abuse and exploitation of children simply because Rwanda is a poor country.Nor can the government delegate to society its obligation to protect children's rights.The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Rwanda ratified in 1991, requires that policymakers incorporate child protection concerns into new policies as the government embarks on ambitious programs including constitutional and land reform. The Government of Rwanda must not only enact concrete legislative protections for children but must also make sustained efforts to ensure that they are enforced.

Juvenile Justice

· Develop and implement as soon as possible a system of juvenile justice that emphasizes the best interests of the child and provides children with a fair hearing and equal protection of the law in accordance with international standards.Children accused of infringing the law have the right to treatment in a manner consistent with the promotion of their sense of dignity and worth, taking into account their age and the desirability of promoting their reintegration into society. The juvenile justice system should be employed to treat those accused of crimes of genocide while they were children as well as children, including those living on the streets, accused of common crimes.

· Immediately release all remaining prisoners arbitrarily detained on charges of genocide while they were children-especially those younger than fourteen, the minimum age for criminal responsibility, at the time of the crime; those against whom there is not substantial evidence; and those who are likely to have completed their sentences in pretrial detention (including all prisoners accused solely of property crimes, for which the maximum penalty is restitution).

· Expedite the case files and trials of all those accused of crimes committed while they were fourteen to eighteen years old if they are not released.

· Ensure that children accused of genocide or common crimes who were fourteen to eighteen years old at the time of the crime and whose cases are in the regular justice system have prompt access to effective legal counsel and other due process protections afforded them under international human rights law, in addition to the separate trials and reduced penalties that should be afforded them under national law.

· Amend the law on gacaca, the popular justice system being put in place to try those accused of genocide, to ensure that defendants who were children at the time of the crime receive additional protections as required by the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

· Follow-up with those who are or have already been released after spending their adolescence in prison to provide them with the necessary education, training, and protection to ensure that they enjoy their human rights.

· Provide training and issue instructions on children's rights for members of the National Police and Local Defense Forces, in particular to cease the use of physical force during interrogation.Investigate and prosecute any police or security agents accused of having beaten or otherwise seriously mistreated children.

Abuse and Exploitation

· Draft and implement binding standards for the protection of children who lack parental care including orphans, children in foster care, children with a parent in prison, children living without adults, and the increasing numbers of children affected by AIDS.The standards should make explicit that these children have the right not to be exploited for their labor, have the right to education, and have the right to own and inherit property.The standards should be disseminated widely to the population.Local authorities should be trained to enforce the standards, and those who fail to do so should be disciplined.

· Take immediate steps to identify vulnerable children and monitor their protection.These should include deployment of additional social workers and lawyers or paralegals at the local (district) level to monitor children's rights proactively.They should have the power to intervene with local authorities and, if necessary, in tribunals when they suspect a child is being abused or exploited.

· Ensure that the official minimum age of eighteen is respected for recruitment for the Rwandan Defense Force and the Local Defense Forces.For example, instruct local authorities and commanders in charge of recruitment to verify the age on identity cards of all new recruits.Officials who violate this rule should be held accountable.

· National and municipal authorities should immediately cease forcible roundups of street children.Resources should be devoted to creating other programs such as education and training programs and encouraging children to take advantage of them, and to addressing the abuse and exploitation that caused them to flee to city streets in the first place.

· Ensure that officials do not arbitrarily deny government assistance for school fees to needy children in marginalized groups.Local authorities who do not comply should be disciplined.

· Address the severe problem of child domestic labor, particularly among child domestics including foster children.Efforts should include the creation of mechanisms to enforce their rights as set forth in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and public information campaigns about the exploitative nature of domestic labor for children.

· Ensure that child protection concerns are reflected in important new legislation and policies currently being developed including the new constitution and land law and policy.
To Rwanda's International Donors and U NICEF :

· Publicly and privately urge the Government of Rwanda to cease abusing children's rights including forcible roundups of street children and denial of due process protections for children in conflict with the law whenever they occur; ensure that donor funding does not support these actions.

· Work with the Government of Rwanda to ensure that child protection concerns are reflected in the range of new legislation and policies currently being elaborated including the new constitution, fiscal decentralization policies, and land law and policy.

· Monitor the use of aid money allocated to the justice system and gacaca to ensure that appropriate safeguards for minors are respected.

· Provide resources and technical assistance to facilitate the government's efforts to provide education and protection for vulnerable children.

· Allocate additional resources for Rwandan nongovernmental organizations to provide training and other forms of assistance to vulnerable children and to monitor the protection of children's rights.

III.Background

In April 1994, a group of Hutu extremists took control of the Rwandan government and launched a genocide of the Tutsi minority, then some 10 percent of the Rwandan population. Within three months they had murdered at least half a million men, women, and children, Tutsi as well as moderate Hutu, some of them with extraordinary cruelty.[1]

President Juvenal Habyarimana and a close circle of supporters had governed since 1973, when Habyarimana had taken power in a coup.A Hutu, Habyarimana was initially popular with the majority Hutu, some 90 percent of the population.But by the end of the 1980s, the ruling group was losing support, partly because of corruption and increasing repression, partly because of general economic decline. Under pressure from a growing internal opposition and from international donors, Habyarimana was facing the end of his personal monopoly of power and the end of the exclusive control of his party, the National Republican Democratic Movement (Mouvement National RpublicainDmocratique, MRND).At the same time, his regime was attacked by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a group based in Uganda and made up mostly of Tutsi refugees.Tutsi had ruled Rwanda before and during the colonial era but were driven from power by a revolution beginning in 1959 that left some 20,000 Tutsi dead and drove hundreds of thousands more into exile.In the face of continued Rwandan refusal to permit their return, the refugees had organized an effective army to cross the border.In 1990, the Rwandan government began discussions that seemed to offer a possibility of resolving the refugee crisis, but the RPF launched its attack anyway on October 1, 1990.

Habyarimana and his followers attempted to use the RPF attack to rebuild their slipping hold on power by rallying the majority Hutu against the Tutsi.They began a campaign to label all Tutsi and Hutu allied with them as ibyitso, "accomplices" of the RPF.The government arrested some 8,000 Tutsi and Hutu opposed to the government immediately after the invasion and thousands more in subsequent weeks.In mid-October, local government officials directed a massacre of Tutsi, the first in a series of killings that would prepare the way for and finally culminate in the genocide of 1994.

The war continued for nearly three years, interrupted by occasional cease fires and negotiations. In 1991, under considerable international pressure to democratize, the regime permitted the establishment of opposing political parties, several of which allied themselves with the RPF and so further undermined the power of Habyarimana and his immediate circle.By 1993 the extremists, determined to hold onto power, put in place all of the elements necessary for the genocide:a propaganda machine that operated first through the written press and national radio and later through a supposedly private radio station, Radio TlvisionLibre des Mille Collines (RTLM); the organization of militia groups-the most notorious of which was the Interahamwe-recruited in part from unemployed young men and trained to kill; supplies of arms and ammunition that had been distributed clandestinely; and a network of committed administrative, military, and political leaders ready to lead the attack on the Tutsi minority.
The international community ignored both the smaller massacres between 1990 and 1993 and the preparations for the catastrophic genocide.It focused instead on bringing about an end to the war between the Rwandan government and the RPF, a goal apparently achieved in August 1993 with the signing of the Arusha Accords.As stipulated in the accords, the United Nations provided a peacekeeping force (United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda, UNAMIR) to facilitate the transition to an elected government and to oversee the integration of the RPF army into the Rwandan Armed Forces (Forces ArmesRwandaises, FAR).But the U.N. wanted a cheap success and failed to provide either the mandate or the forces necessary to ensure a prompt and orderly transition.

Habyarimana had signed the accords only under duress and was determined to prevent implementation of the agreement. He created one obstacle after another to the installation of the transitional government, playing skillfully upon divisions within the internal opposition that was to share power with the Habyarimana group and with the RPF in the new government.The RPF rejected attempts to change the terms of the agreement, and the process dragged on from August 1993 to April 1994.During that time, both sides prepared to reopen the war.The extremists around Habyarimana pushed forward their plans for genocide, which they apparently considered a weapon for simultaneously winning the war against the RPF and recapturing political power within Rwanda.

On April 6, 1994, Habyarimana's plane was shot down as he was returning from a peace conference in Tanzania.People close to Habyarimana, including those at Radio RTLM, immediately blamed the RPF for his death but offered no convincing proof of this charge.The identity of those responsible for downing the plane has yet to be determined.The killing of Habyarimana was used as a pretext for initiating the massive killings that had been planned for months, both of Tutsi and of those Hutu who were opposed to Habyarimana.

Shortly after the killing began Rwandan army soldiers killed ten Belgian peacekeepers, apparently in reaction to reports that Belgians had helped shoot down Habyarimana's plane.The extremists had spread reports of Belgian complicity to ensure an attack on Belgian troops, the best trained and the best equipped troops in the UNAMIR force.Five days later Belgium withdrew its troops, as the extremists had hoped they would, and began exerting pressure on other members of the Security Council to remove the entire peacekeeping force.On April 21, the Security Council decided to remove all but several hundred of the UNAMIR soldiers who were then protecting some 20,000 persons at risk, many of them Tutsi.

Within a few days of the start of the killing, the organizers of the genocide were confident that the international community would not intervene. They extended and intensified the killing after the departure of most of the UNAMIR forces.Following lines laid out by national political, administrative, and military leaders, local-level authorities and politicians led the efforts to annihilate the Tutsi and moderate Hutu.Soldiers or national policemen (officially part of the army) launched and directed the killing in many communities.Party leaders directed their militia to join in the slaughter, sending them around the country as needed to initiate or intensify killings. Ordinary citizens also joined in attacks, following the orders of officials or militia heads.Many of these ordinary citizens acted from fear, both fear of the Tutsi whom they had been taught were coming to kill them, and fear of officials or militia who threatened reprisals against anyone who did not join in the carnage.

Once the genocide began, the RPF renewed its military offensive against the government, instigating massive movements of refugees, most of them Hutu, into Tanzania in late April. Fearing that these refugee movements would destabilize the whole region and horrified by the continued slaughter, the U.N. decided on May 17 to send an expanded peacekeeping force, UNAMIR II, to Rwanda.Because of bureaucratic delays at the U.N. and the lack of political will among most member states, the new force did not begin to arrive until August.By that time, the RPF had defeated the genocidal government and had established a new government.

The defeated government and army led a mass exodus of some two million Hutu into neighboring countries in July 1994.In a refugee crisis of unprecedented scale, some 50,000 predominantly Hutu refugees died of disease, hunger, and lack of water in neighboring Zaire in the next few weeks.Hundreds of thousands of others who believed they were threatened by the RPF advance took refuge in displaced persons camps in southwestern Rwanda in an area first protected by French troops and later supervised by UNAMIR.

Within months, soldiers of the defeated Rwandan army (now known as ex-FAR), members of militia, administrators, and political leaders who had directed the genocide began rebuilding their strength in Zaire. Using refugee camps as military bases in violation of international law, they began mounting incursions into Rwanda.[2] In the absence of any effective international action to halt these attacks, the Rwandan government allied with the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (ADFL), a group opposed to the government of Mobutu SeseSeko in Zaire that was cobbled together for the occasion.In alliance with Uganda, Rwanda and the ADFL overthrew Mobutu, established a new government, and renamed Zaire the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, hereafter referred to as Congo). In the course of this war, the armed forces of the new Rwandan government, known as the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA),[3] destroyed the refugee camps in eastern Congo, killing tens of thousands of civilians on the spot or in later pursuit through the forests. At this time, hundreds of thousands of refugees were repatriated to Rwanda, some of them against their will. Thousands of others returned in later years, but an estimated 173,000 people from the original camp population were still unaccounted for in 1999.[4]

During 1997 and 1998, ex-FAR and former militia members as well as new recruits who had not participated in the genocide launched incursions into Rwanda, particularly in the northwest. The RPA responded to these attacks ruthlessly. In these military operations both sides attacked civilians, causing numerous casualties. Seeking to deprive the combatants of any support from the population, Rwandan authorities forced many local residents to move to government-supervised camps.Nearly half of the population of the northwest had been displaced by the end of 1998, either to the camps or to forests in Rwanda or Congo.

By late 1998, the RPA had largely managed to push the combatants back across the border into Congo where fighting has continued in a second Congo war with Rwanda and its new local ally, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (Rassemblementcongolais pour la dmocratie, RCD) which is fighting the Congolese government.[5]In this war, Rwandan military officers, politicians, and businessmen have profited by exploiting Congo's extensive natural resources including gold, diamonds, timber, and coltan, a mineral used in cellular phones and other products.[6]Rwanda withdrew most of its forces from the Congo in 2002, but the situation in the region remained tense.

Notes:

[1] For a detailed study of the genocide, see Human Rights Watch, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999).A recent Rwandan government count of genocide victimsclaims that more than a million were killed. "Government Puts Genocide Victims at 1.07 Million," U.N. Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), December 19, 2001.For a discussion of the problem of statistics, see Leave None to Tell the Story, pp.15-16.

The word "children" is used in this report to mean anyone under the age of eighteen.Article 1 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child defines a child as "every human being below the age of eighteen years unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier."The African Charter for the Rights and Welfare of the Child also defines a child as a human being under the age of eighteen (art. 2).

[2] Human Rights Watch Arms Project, "Rwanda / Zaire:Rearming with Impunity:International Support for the Perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide," A Human Rights Watch Report, vol. 7 no. 4, May 1995, p. 3; UNHCR Inspection and Evaluation Service, Refugee Camp Security in the Great Lakes Region, April 1997.

[3] In 2002, Rwanda changed the army's name to the Rwanda Defence Force.

[4] UNHCR Briefing Notes, Rwanda:Repatriations from DRC, May 4, 1999.See also, Human Rights Watch, "Democratic Republic of Congo, What Kabila is Hiding:Civilian Killings and Impunity in Eastern Congo," A Human Rights Watch Report, vol. 9 no. 5(A), October 1997.More than one thousand refugees per month returned to Rwanda from Congo most months through 2001.Most of these had fled Rwanda in 1994, but others fled more recently in 1997-1998 or subsequent periods of insecurity.

[5] Laurent Desire Kabila was assassinated in January 2001 and his son, Joseph Kabila, succeeded him as president of the DRC.The RPA continues to fight against the new Kabila government.

[6] See the Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo, transmitted by the Secretary General to the Security Council in a letter dated April 12, 2001. U.N. Doc. S/2001/357; Addendum to the report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo, transmitted by the Secretary General to the Security Council in a letter dated November 13, 2001, U.N. Doc. S/2001/1072.

Source:
Human Rights Watch

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