Author: Nicole Kamanzi Muteteri

The organization, affiliated with Swiss-based charitable foundation Sight and Life (SAL), has introduced multi-layered evidence-based interventions to improve child, adolescent, women health as well as training and assisting farmers towards self-sustenance.

SAL Rwanda’s achievements were highlighted during a policy dialogue jointly organized by the Embassy of France and SAL Rwanda. The timing of the discussions was particularly relevant, as findings from Rwanda’s Sixth Demographic and Health Survey (RDHS) show that 33% of children are stunted, while 25% of pregnant women are affected by anemia.

The forum aimed to assess the current state of nutrition in Rwanda, with a particular focus on pregnant women and young children, and to review progress. Results from recent national initiatives, including the government’s decision to replace iron and folic acid supplements with a more comprehensive Multiple Micronutrient Supplement (MMS) for pregnant women, showed tangible progress.

The limited nutrient composition constrained the impact of iron and folic acid constrained its impact. The newly adopted MMS formulation contains 15 essential vitamins and minerals, offering broader nutritional support during pregnancy and contributing to improved maternal health and birth outcomes.

Elvis Gakuba, the Sight and Life Regional Director for Africa, stressed that improving nutrition for pregnant women and children is not just a health issue but also a vital investment in Rwanda’s long-term economic growth.

“Promoting adequate nutrition for pregnant women and children is not just about healthcare; it is an essential investment in the future of Rwanda. By prioritizing nutrition and well-being of both mothers and children, we are contributing directly to the nation’s development,” he explained.

Gakuba further shared that through a study conducted in partnership with UNICEF and RBC, SAL Rwanda has distributed MMS across all Rwandan districts. “We have reached close to 90% of pregnant women,” he said.

Stéphane Le Brech, the First Counselor at the French Embassy in Rwanda, responsible for cultural cooperation, noted that the discussions were organized in line with commitments made during the Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit, held in Paris in March 2025.

The Rwandan government remains steadfast in its commitment to addressing malnutrition, particularly among children and pregnant women. The National Strategy for Transformation (NST2), set to run from 2024 to 2029, aims to combat malnutrition and reduce the current stunting rate of 33% to 15% by 2029.

Sight and Life works across Rwanda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Tanzania, South Africa, and Nigeria, integrating nutrition with livelihoods and food system strengthening.

In Rwanda, for instance, the organization’s project to reduce post-harvest losses, including efforts to combat aflatoxins in maize, have supported 2,400 farmers, reducing crop losses by up to 40%. Around 6,500 tons of crops have been saved from aflatoxin contamination.

The organization also runs a Food Fortification Project aimed at enriching widely consumed foods with essential vitamins and minerals to improve nutrition and combat nutrient deficiencies.

With a $3.5 million grant from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Sight and Life is implementing the “Nutrition in City Ecosystems – NICE” project, which works to improve nutrition in urban areas of developing countries through community-led initiatives.

The project fosters collaboration between the agriculture, food, and health sectors, and supports public-private partnerships, with a focus on women and youth entrepreneurship.

NICE enhances urban governance and promotes the development of sustainable food systems, increasing the availability of healthy, locally grown food produced through agroecological practices, while also raising awareness about environmentally responsible diets.

Over the past seven years, Sight and Life has provided training in agroecology and sustainable farming practices to farmers, supported 14 cooperatives in fishing and livestock, and provided agricultural inputs and project management skills to 25 early childhood development (ECD) institutions – reinforcing the link between nutrition, resilient livelihoods, and long-term national progress.

In reality, it is a style, far more familiar—and far more dangerous. It is a carefully coated act of genocide relativism, FDLR rehabilitation, and selective truth-making, draped in the language of critical geopolitics.

The article, despite its anti-Rwanda tone—it is more pro-impunity, pro-genocide denial, and unquestionably associated with the long-standing ideological mission of Jambo Asbl: to launder génocidaire networks into respectability while delegitimizing any discourse that focuses on Tutsi vulnerability—whether in Rwanda or in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

{{The sanitization of FDLR}}

Few sentences better demonstrate how denial dresses itself as analysis. “The FDLR does not represent a strategic threat to Rwanda.” Says Ishimwe. The argument is very familiar and increasingly recycled: the FDLR has not launched “major” cross-border attacks for over twenty years; most of its members were children or not yet born in 1994. Its members, according to Ishimwe—are socially embedded refugees rather than ideological actors. Hence, Rwanda’s security concerns are a political construction rather than a security reality. It sounds dignified, almost civilized. It is none of those things.

This type of reasoning depends much on a deliberate misinterpretation of how genocidal ideology works. Genocide is not a once-in-a-lifetime event frozen in time. This crime is an ideology with a memory, a pedagogy, and a lineage. Genocide survives precisely because it is transmitted—through language, myth, manufactured grievance, and political organization.

Time does not dissolve an ideology when its custodians remain alive, organized, and unrepentant. To argue otherwise is akin to claiming Adolf Hitler bore no responsibility for the Holocaust because he did not invent antisemitism. Hatred does not require novelty; it requires continuity.

The claim that the FDLR is harmless because it has not staged “major” incursions into Rwanda for two decades is a morally vacant metric. Are recorded incursions inside Rwanda imaginary? Are killings in eastern Congo inconsequential because they happened on the wrong side of a border? Must violence be spectacular enough to qualify as threatening? This is selective blindness. To downplay these attacks is not neutrality—it is sympathy, bordering on disappointment that they were not deadlier.

More illuminating still is the argument that the majority of FDLR members are “young people born and raised in exile” who have never set foot in Rwanda. This is presented as an exoneration. In reality, it is an indictment of the ideology’s survival. Being born in exile does not immunize one against genocidal indoctrination; it often deepens it.

History itself dismantles Ishimwe’s alibi. On 22 November 1992, Léon Mugesera delivered his infamous incendiary speech in Kabaya, openly calling for the extermination of Tutsi and lamenting that earlier pogroms had not gone far enough. In that speech, he declared:

“I recently said to someone who was boasting about being in the PL (Parti Liberal): ‘The mistake we made in 1959, even though I was a child then, was that we let you leave.’ … Let me tell you that your home is in Ethiopia, and that we will send you back along the Nyabarongo river so you get there quickly.”

Mugesera was six years old in 1959, during the first mass anti-Tutsi pogroms he later regretted had been incomplete. Age did not prevent him from becoming one of the most articulate propagandists of genocidal ideology.

Mugesera was not convicted by the ICTR. Canada found him inadmissible for refugee protection, deported him to Rwanda, where he was tried and convicted by Rwandan courts for crimes of genocide. The correction only strengthens the point: genocidal ideology matures, travels, and waits—sometimes for decades.

Ishimwe also knows that Laure Uwase, a prominent Jambo Asbl figure, was two years old in 1994. Yet this did not prevent her from becoming active in an organization that defends convicted génocidaires, promotes genocide denial, and reframes perpetrators as victims. Youth did not neutralize the ideology. It ensured its afterlife.

Equally nonsensical is the invocation of the ICTR. The affirmation that the Tribunal “never classified the FDLR as a genocidal organization” is technically factual and intellectually dishonest. The ICTR had a clearly defined temporal jurisdiction: crimes committed in 1994. It fulfilled that mandate. Expecting it to classify criminal organizations formed afterward is like accusing a court of carelessness for refusing to rule on crimes not yet committed. Ishimwe’s appeal to the ICTR is not legal reasoning—it is a desperate attempt to borrow relevance from an institution whose purpose is being maliciously misrepresented.

Then comes the sanitization by numbers: Rwanda, we are told by Ishimwe—integrated “dozens” of former FDLR and ex-FAR members into its army and institutions. The arithmetic is ideological. It must be “dozens,” not thousands, to sustain the insinuation that Rwanda’s institutions are ethnically exclusionary and that integration was cosmetic.

The truth is simpler and far less useful to the narrative: those integrated were individual Rwandans, processed as individuals, not as representatives of genocidal organizations. Anyone credibly implicated in genocide is held to account. Integration was not rehabilitation of the FDLR; it was dismantling it—one defector at a time.

This distinction matters. Rwanda does not negotiate with ideologies built on extermination. The FDLR, FDU-Inkingi, MRND, CDR, DALFA-Umulinzi and related political families share a machetocratic worldview—one that treats violence as heritage and denial as strategy. They will never ever be granted political oxygen—not because Rwanda is intolerant of dissent, but because no society negotiates with those who deny its dead.

The real complaint, therefore, is not falsification; it is exposure. The frustration that the “neutralization of the FDLR” occupies a central place in the Washington framework is logical—for those who relied on vagueness as shelter. Once neutralization becomes an unambiguous policy, the linguistic hiding places vanish. The language of “refugees,” “social roots,” and “political interlocutors” no longer protects what is, at its core, a criminal organization animated by an unreconstructed ideology.

This is where the argument shelters its analytical dress and reveals its emotional core. There is agony in the insistence that the FDLR be acknowledged, legitimized, raised up. Not the pain of marginalization, but the pain of losing cover. When the FDLR is named as a threat, those who speak for it like Jambo Asbl feel suddenly exposed—ideologically naked, stripped of euphemism.

FDLR leaders have never renounced genocidal ideology. Yet Ishimwe wants the reader to see them not as perpetrators or ideological heirs, but as wronged civilians unfairly criminalized by history. His article carries a barely concealed grief that the FDLR is treated as a threat rather than what he wishes it to be seen as: a legitimate political actor awaiting recognition.

Here, Jambo Asbl functions not as a watchdog but as a communications bureau for a genocidal militia, polishing language, reframing crimes, and lobbying for political rehabilitation.

To maintain that Rwanda’s security concerns are merely “discursive constructions” is to ask survivors to believe in the same ideology that once told them extermination was a political necessity. It is to insist that memory surrender to convenience—and that history apologize for being inconvenient.

The FDLR is not dangerous because of what it has failed to do recently. It is dangerous because of what it refuses to renounce, what it continues to teach, and what it still dreams of becoming. Pretending otherwise is not scholarship. It is advocacy—thinly veiled, emotionally invested, and increasingly transparent.

Some opinions age badly. Others are born expired. This one belongs to the latter category.

{{Genocide warning as “manipulation”}}

Norman Ishimwe’s attack on what he dismissively calls the “Saving Narrative”—the claim that Congolese Tutsi, Banyamulenge, and other Rwandophone communities face an existential threat in the DRC—reveals more about the psychology of his political camp than about Rwanda’s diplomacy. What he presents as narrative deconstruction is, in fact, a textbook exercise in genocide trivialization, dressed up as media criticism.

At the core of Ishimwe’s argument lies a breathtaking proposition: that alerts about a possible genocide against Congolese Tutsi are not grounded in reality but are a strategic invention by Kigali, manufactured after 2022 for geopolitical convenience. According to this logic, history itself works on a timetable synchronized with presidential handshakes. When Kagame and Tshisekedi were cordial, no danger existed; when relations soured, genocide abruptly appeared—conveniently. It is more of magical thinking than analysis.

Genocide does not declare itself politely, nor does it wait for diplomatic frost. It grows in permissive environments—where hate speech circulates freely. It comes to the open when armed groups target civilians based on identity, and the state tolerates or cooperates with forces animated by exterminatory ideologies. Eastern Congo has offered precisely this environment for decades. To claim that warnings only emerged because Rwanda “needed” them is to argue that smoke is invented by fire alarms.

Ishimwe is principally upset that Rwanda, UN bodies, and others speak openly of hate speech targeting Banyamulenge and Tutsi communities. But hate speech does not become imaginary because it is problematic to admit. When leaflets circulate calling Banyamulenge “foreign invaders,” when armed groups chant slogans inherited from genocidal vocabularies, when massacres are selectively directed at civilians because of who they are— and not what they did—then warning language is not manipulation. It is our responsibility.

The effort to discredit evidence by calling videos “unverifiable” or accounts “fake” is equally revealing. In regions where whistleblowers are killed, access is restricted, and government sponsored militia control territory, evidence rarely arrives with the aesthetic neatness preferred by deniers. Yet Ishimwe’s standard is clear: unless suffering is documented in ways that absolve his ideological allies, it must be fabricated. This is not skepticism but curated disbelief.

More troubling is his portrayal of Rwanda’s diplomatic interventions—particularly Ambassador Martin Ngoga’s reference to his experience as a survivor of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi—as cynical emotional blackmail. In his machetocratic worldview, survivors are expected to forget their history precisely when they recognize its warning signs. For Jambo members, memory is tolerable only when it remains silent.

Ishimwe accuses Rwanda of “instrumentalizing” the genocide. What he cannot say—but clearly feels—is something far more painful: that the genocide failed. The legitimacy acquired by the RPF in stopping it, saving lives, and ripping apart genocidal power structures remains an unendurable fact for political families whose worldview depended on the success of extermination. That legitimacy is not a myth. It is the residue of survival.

When Ishimwe claims that Rwanda is “transposing” its 1994 legitimacy onto Congo, he reveals the true grievance. The problem is not that Rwanda warns against genocide; it is that Rwanda knows what genocide looks like before the world decides to notice. No country on this continent understands the cost of genocide like Rwanda does: over a million lives lost in less than one hundred days. That experience does not expire. It instructs.

The irony deepens when Ishimwe insists that genocide prevention discourse is merely a cover for aggression, while simultaneously defending or minimizing groups whose ideological ancestors carried machetes, not placards. This is the paradox of machetocratic psychology: violence is denied until it succeeds; warnings are ridiculed until it is too late.

Calling the fear of genocide a “narrative” is an old trick. Holocaust deniers used it. Bosnia’s genocide was once dismissed the same way—until mass graves made the narrative indecent. The dead are always accused, posthumously, of exaggeration.

The real problem is not why Rwanda speaks of genocide prevention, but why others are so endowed in silencing that speech. Why does the mere invocation of Tutsi vulnerability provoke such hostility? Why must Banyamulenge or Hema suffering be downgraded to propaganda before it is even fully documented?

This is where organized amnesia becomes deadly. Organizations and individuals who promote forgetting do not merely misread history—they aggressively disarm societies against its repetition.

Imagine a world asked to forget cannibalism filmed on camera, women stripped naked and paraded publicly to humiliate their bodies into submission. Imagine too— villages burned to ash while perpetrators chant ethnic slurs, and survivors hunted not for what they did but for what they are.

Imagine all this dismissed as “fake,” “unverified,” or strategically inconvenient, not because it did not happen, but because acknowledging it would implicate the wrong people. This is how atrocity is laundered. When memory is framed as propaganda and evidence as manipulation, perpetrators are cleared and vindicated in advance, victims are rendered suspect, and violence is granted a second life—this time with intellectual respectability.

History teaches humanity, with brutal consistency, that genocide is never preceded by silence alone, but by campaigns demanding forgetfulness. And when amnesia is organized, coordinated, and rewarded, it becomes not an error of judgment, but an accomplice to future crimes.

{{Jambo’s ideological triage}}

What Ishimwe omits—systematically and deliberately—is that the FDLR’s political doctrine, command structures, symbols, and public communications remain explicitly anchored in genocide ideology. He ignores the group’s own statements glorifying the 1994 genocide, its continued use of genocidal rhetoric, and its persistent collaboration with Congolese armed groups engaged in anti-Tutsi violence.

More revealing still is what he does not demand. Nowhere does Ishimwe call on the FDLR to disarm, repatriate, or renounce its ideology. Instead, he reframes the group as a misunderstood “residual” actor whose roots are “social” rather than criminal. This rhetorical maneuver performs a precise function: transforming génocidaires from perpetrators into victims of narrative exaggeration.

This is classic Jambo Asbl doctrine. Genocide becomes an unfortunate historical footnote; génocidaire movements become political stakeholders; and accountability is recast as persecution.

At this point, clarity is required: any organization that defends, minimizes, or sanitizes the FDLR is categorically disqualified from the human rights ecosystem.

Human rights advocacy rests on three non-negotiable principles: recognition of victims, accountability for perpetrators, and rejection of genocidal ideology in all its forms. Jambo Asbl violates all three.

By systematically reframing the FDLR as “misunderstood refugees,” by attacking efforts to neutralize a group rooted in genocide ideology, and by dismissing the fears and exterminatory experiences of Tutsi communities, Jambo abandons the universality of human rights and replaces it with ethnic selectivity and ideological loyalty.

Human rights organizations do not lobby for genocidal militias to be recognized as political interlocutors. They do not relativize genocide. They do not mock survivors’ fears as “fake narratives.” When an organization crosses that line, it ceases to be a human rights actor and becomes what Jambo Asbl plainly is: an advocacy platform for denial, revisionism, and impunity.

{{AFC/M23 in reverse}}

Ishimwe accuses Rwanda of fabricating the Congolese identity of the AFC/M23. Yet he performs the mirror image of the same distortion: denying that Congolese Tutsi can ever be bona fide Congolese political actors unless sanctioned by Kinshasa’s ethno-nationalist orthodoxy.

By insisting that the AFC is merely a “camouflage device” and that its fighters are essentially foreign or Rwandan-directed, Ishimwe reproduces the same exclusionary logic that has fueled decades of violence: Tutsi political agency is illegitimate by definition.

No Congolese community is subjected to this standard. Mai-Mai groups are Congolese despite external backing. Wazalendo militias remain Congolese despite ethnic targeting. Only Tutsi armed actors are eternally foreign—unless they are being killed, in which case their foreignness is conveniently forgotten.

His essay is a masterclass in narrative engineering—one in which génocidaires are softened, victims are erased, and ideology is re-baptized as critique.

Ishimwe’s article does not simply criticize Rwanda. He rehabilitates the FDLR as a political subject, minimizes genocidal violence against Congolese Tutsi, and advances a worldview in which Tutsi vulnerability is always suspect and never intrinsic.

This is not journalism or human rights activism. It is ideological continuity with the very forces that made genocide possible in the first place. Calling this “truth” does not make it so. It makes it dangerous. And the world has seen—too many times—where such selective truths lead.

Ishimwe’s attempt to morally equate the FDLR with AFC/M23 is perhaps the most revealing maneuver in the article. His resentment that the FDLR is prioritized for eradication while AFC/M23 negotiates betrays his underlying goal: elevation of the FDLR into a negotiating partner with the Rwandan state.

This equivalence collapses instantly. Whatever one thinks of AFC/M23, it is recognized as a Congolese politico-military movement engaged in a political conflict. The FDLR, by contrast, is an organization born of genocide, sustained by genocide ideology, with Rwanda as its horizon.

To demand parity between the two is not peace-building. It is genocide normalization.

{{The center of moral illogicality}}

For Ishimwe to write that the discourse and acts of extermination “did not exist” before 2022 and arose purely from Rwanda’s diplomatic needs is simply absurd. If that is the case—hundreds of thousands of Congolese refugees in Rwanda, Uganda and elsewhere, are people who left their country for greener pastures.

There is no engagement with documented massacres of Banyamulenge, no acknowledgment of ethnic cleansing in Minembwe, no reckoning with hate speech by Congolese officials, militia leaders, or media outlets calling Tutsi “foreigners” to be eliminated. The suffering of Congolese Tutsi is treated not as human tragedy but as raw material for Rwandan propaganda.

The implication is unmistakable: Congolese Tutsi lives only matter insofar as they are useful to Kigali’s narrative. When they are butchered, displaced, or hunted, Ishimwe’s prose goes curiously silent. Their deaths are not tragedies to be confronted, but inconveniences to be rhetorically managed.

One searches in vain for even a single sentence expressing moral concern for these communities. Their extermination anxiety is dismissed as invention; their fear is pathologized as strategy.

Ishimwe repeatedly invokes “empirical scrutiny,” “evidence,” and “reality,” yet his relationship with truth is profoundly instrumental. What aligns with his ideological posture is elevated to fact; what disrupts it is dismissed as fiction.

Thus, all reports documenting anti-Tutsi violence are treated as narrative products. Genocidal threats become “unverifiable videos.” Meanwhile, his own assertions—unsupported by comparable scrutiny—are presented as self-evident. This is not unintentional. It reflects a deeper epistemology common to genocide denial circles: truth is not what is demonstrable, but what is politically useful.

In this framework, Rwanda lies by definition—while Jambo’s affiliates tell the truth by conviction. Evidence is judged not by verifiability but by alignment.

Let us now speak plainly without restraint. Jambo Asbl is not a misunderstood organization unfairly maligned by its critics. It is a theater of moral absurdity, where genocidal ideology is dressed in the language of victimhood, and where the denial of Tutsi suffering is marketed as critical thinking.

Its members speak of “truth” while rejecting evidence, invoke “human rights” while defending those who annihilated them, and posture as civil society while acting as a public relations annex for the FDLR.

To watch Jambo Asbl claim a seat at the human rights table is to witness the arsonist applying for a job as fire inspector—armed with a lecture on how flames are merely a narrative construct. Its representatives denounce “instrumentalization of genocide” while instrumentalizing genocide denial; they accuse others of propaganda while recycling the talking points of convicted génocidaires; they demand moral seriousness while sneering at the graves of victims.

Even more astonishing are the diplomats, NGOs, and self-styled defenders of universal values who entertain Jambo Asbl as a legitimate interlocutor. One must ask: what ethical contortions are required to treat an organization that defends a genocidal militia as a human rights partner? What intellectual bankruptcy allows genocide denial to masquerade as dissent, and impunity to be confused with reconciliation?

There is something horrifically revealing in Jambo’s anguish that the FDLR is still considered a threat. These are not tears for peace; they are tears for lost political opportunity. The pain expressed is not humanitarian—it is strategic. It is the regret of those who believe history could be rewritten, crimes legalized, and the lethal ideology reborn under a new logo.

The world has seen this script before. In every genocide, there are killers, victims, and—eventually—apologists who insist that time has softened everything except the demand for accountability. Jambo Asbl has chosen its role with chilling clarity.

Universities Promoting Linkages for Impactful Training, Innovation and Technology Transfer in Agriculture (UPLIFT-AG) is a project involving 12 universities from countries including Rwanda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Denmark, Germany, and Italy.

The project seeks to educate, promote research, disseminate findings to the public, and foster innovation.

The project was officially launched on December 4, 2025, at the University of Rwanda, Musanze campus, in Busogo sector, where representatives from around 70 organizations were invited to discuss potential collaborations with the university to enhance agricultural research.

Dr. Guillaume Nyagatare, the Principal of UR-CAFF, explained that although the university has conducted significant research in agriculture, it was essential to collaborate with professionals from the field to understand the broader issues at play.

“Our university aims to be a leader in agriculture, providing research that benefits Rwandans and neighboring countries. However, for our research to be impactful, we need experts who work in the field every day, to help us better understand the challenges and inform our studies,” he stated.

Rev. Dr. Nathan Kanuma Taremwa, the Director of Research and Innovation and the project lead at UR-CAFF, explained that the project will work with various organizations in areas such as information sharing, research collaboration, teaching, providing internships to students, and more.

“We aim to work with numerous organizations in a structured manner, enhancing all parties involved through collaboration on essential research, supporting student education, and providing practical training, so that students can later apply their knowledge in the field,” he said.

Dr. Jean D’Amour Manirere, a lecturer at UR-CAFF, added that this collaboration will not only increase research at the university but also improve how research findings are shared with the intended beneficiaries.

Professor Thomas Bayer from the HNU University in Germany emphasized that collaboration between universities and agricultural institutions not only promotes research but also advances the development of agriculture itself.

“Partnerships between private sector organizations and universities are the key to development, especially in the agriculture sector. The fact that this initiative is launched in Rwanda is a significant step, and it will benefit students and institutions alike, as they will gain access to valuable project information and research,” he noted.

This project, launched in partnership with other African and European universities, is supported by the European Union (EU) from 2023 to 2026.

“I strongly condemn the continued arbitrary detention of 59 UN colleagues and partner personnel, as well as staff from NGOs, civil society organizations, and diplomatic missions,” he told reporters after briefing the Security Council on the situation in Yemen in closed-door consultations. “I call for their immediate and unconditional release, in accordance with international law.”

In recent days, Houthi de facto authorities referred three UN personnel to a special criminal court. This referral must be rescinded, Guterres said. They have been charged in relation to their performance of UN official duties. These charges must be dropped, he said.

“The continued detention of our colleagues is a profound injustice to all those who have dedicated their lives to helping the people of Yemen. The United Nations and its partners must never be targeted, arrested, or detained in connection with their official duties. We must be allowed to perform our work without interference,” said Guterres.

In the press encounter, Guterres called for de-escalation of the tensions in Yemen.

Tensions have been simmering across Yemen, and dramatic new developments in the eastern governorates are turning up the heat, he said. “A full resumption of hostilities could have serious ramifications on regional peace and security, including on the Red Sea, in the Gulf of Aden, and in the Horn of Africa.”

Guterres urged all parties to exercise maximum restraint, de-escalate tensions, and resolve differences through dialogue.

“Yemen needs a sustainable, negotiated political settlement — one that embraces the aspirations of all Yemenis and brings this devastating conflict to an end. Until then, the Yemeni people will continue to pay a terrible price,” he said.

The TFR, which indicates the average number of children a woman would have over her lifetime, fell from 4.1 in the 2019-2020 survey.

The decline is evident nationwide, with the sharpest drops in the Western Province (from 4.0 to 3.4) and Northern Province (from 4.1 to 3.8).

Urban areas maintained a stable rate of 3.4, while rural areas saw a decrease from 4.3 to 3.9.

The City of Kigali recorded the lowest TFR at 3.1, followed by the South Province at 3.8 and the East Province at 4.0. The trend is largely attributed to rising family planning adoption.

According to the survey, modern contraceptive use among women in unions surged to 78% from 64% in prior surveys, with injectables (34%) and implants (25%) being the most popular methods.

Among married women, about half still desire more children, but preferences have shifted: only 13% want another soon, 37% prefer to delay, and 47% want no more or have been sterilized.

The RDHS7 also highlights broader health progress. Maternal mortality has plummeted from 1,071 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2000 to 149 in 2025, while under-5 mortality stands at 36 per 1,000 live births.

The RDHS7, conducted between June and October 2025, surveyed over 14,500 households across the country, offering comprehensive, nationally representative data on key issues such as fertility, maternal and child health, nutrition, HIV, and mortality.

Throughout the year, Rwanda’s influence on the international stage has continued to grow. The country garnered widespread recognition for its strong governance, diplomatic efforts, and flourishing international trade, particularly in tea, coffee, and minerals.

Additionally, Rwanda’s vibrant tourism industry and its prominent role as a host for international conferences further elevated its global profile. These efforts helped Rwanda attract over 1.15 million visitors during the 2024/2025 period, cementing its position as an increasingly influential global player.

In the realm of diplomacy, Rwanda continued to expand its influence opening new embassies around the world. In return, several countries have also chosen to establish embassies in Rwanda.

One such move took place in Luxembourg, where Rwanda’s first ambassador, Munyangaju Aurore Mimosa, arrived in March 2025. She assumed duties after presenting her credentials to the King of Luxembourg.

Luxembourg, located in the heart of Europe, borders Belgium to the north and west, France to the south, and Germany to the east. Situated over 6,300 kilometers from Rwanda, Luxembourg is not known for its high mountains, with its highest point, Kneiff, reaching only 560 meters above sea level.

With a population of just over 670,000 and an area of 2,586 square kilometers, Luxembourg is more than 10 times smaller than Rwanda. Nearly half of Luxembourg’s population is foreign-born, and its citizens speak three languages: French, German, and Luxembourgish.

{{Rwanda expands relations with Pakistan}}

In April 2025, Rwanda opened a new embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, with Fatou Harerimana serving as Rwanda’s ambassador to Pakistan. Since the embassy’s opening, several initiatives aimed at enhancing trade and investment between the two countries have been launched.

Key developments include the possibility of direct flights between Rwanda and Pakistan, and exploring potential areas of collaboration.

Pakistan established its embassy in Rwanda in 2021. Following the opening of Rwanda’s embassy in Islamabad, both countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on diplomatic training in April 2025.

{{Growing relations with Algeria }}

In July 2025, Rwanda appointed Vincent Karega as its first ambassador to Algeria.

He presented his credentials in October 2025 to Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, marking an important step in strengthening bilateral relations between the two countries.

In a message shared on his X account on October 28, 2025, Amb. Karega expressed his delight at becoming Rwanda’s first resident ambassador to Algeria.

“I am honored to officially present to President Tebboune of Algeria my letters of credence as the first resident Rwandan Ambassador. Rwanda and Algeria are determined to elevate our bilateral and continental relations to the highest level,” he noted.

Rwanda and Algeria have maintained cooperation in areas such as security and education, with several Rwandan students pursuing studies in Algeria, a country where Arabic, French, and Tamazight are the official languages.

Since 1982, the two nations have signed various agreements covering economic cooperation, social development, cultural exchange, and other fields.

In December 2023, Algeria opened its embassy in Rwanda, demonstrating a renewed commitment to strengthening diplomatic ties.

On June 3, 2025, President Paul Kagame paid a state visit to Algeria, where he toured the National School of Artificial Intelligence, which also hosts Rwandan students.

During the visit, he held talks with President Tebboune focused on promoting stronger African cooperation in areas such as cross-border trade.

Before his new appointment, Ambassador Karega served as Rwanda’s envoy to South Africa until 2019, after which he was posted to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He left the DRC in 2022, following heightened diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

On December 20, 2024, he was appointed Rwanda’s Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region, prior to taking up his current role as Ambassador to Algeria.

{{New embassies in Kigali}}

In 2025, Rwanda’s diplomatic relations expanded significantly, as countries from all over the world chose to open embassies in Kigali. One notable example is Brazil, which decided to appoint its ambassador to Rwanda, ending years of reliance on its embassy based in Kenya.

Irene Vida Gala, Brazil’s first ambassador to Rwanda, expressed that Brazil hopes to learn from Rwanda’s success in reconciliation and peacebuilding. She also shared her vision of seeing “Visit Rwanda” on the shirts of Brazilian football teams.

Ambassador Gala also emphasized that both nations would work together to enhance cooperation in areas such as agriculture, livestock, and tourism.

{{Denmark commits to enhancing trade with Rwanda}}

In August 2025, Denmark opened its embassy in Rwanda, appointing Casper Stenger Jensen as the first Danish ambassador.

After presenting his credentials to President Kagame, Ambassador Jensen outlined his focus on strengthening investment and trade relations between the two nations.

Denmark has embassies in 11 countries across Africa, and Rwanda is now a key part of their diplomatic outreach.

In the same year, Gabon also appointed its first ambassador to Rwanda, with a primary focus on promoting economic, cultural, and educational cooperation.

Gabon is home to over 2,000 Rwandan students who are currently studying at various institutions in Rwanda.

{{Switzerland’s Embassy in Rwanda }}

Although Rwanda and Switzerland have maintained diplomatic relations since 1960, Switzerland officially opened its embassy in Kigali on November 20, 2025.

The embassy’s opening aligns with the country’s ongoing regional development efforts and bolsters Switzerland’s image as a strong advocate for peace and security.

In December 2025, Poland also opened its embassy in Rwanda, following Rwanda’s decision to open its embassy in Poland in 2021.

On November 13, 2024, Rwanda and Poland signed the Basic Air Service Agreement (BASA), which focuses on expanding air cooperation between the two countries.

Education continues to be a cornerstone of cooperation, as the 2022 Rwanda-Poland Education Forum led to agreements between universities in both countries. Poland has hosted over 1,500 Rwandan students, making them the largest group of foreign students from a single country in Poland.

Currently, Rwanda is represented by 49 ambassadors across the globe and has one Consul General. Together, these diplomats oversee Rwanda’s interests across 147 countries, with 37 honorary consuls representing Rwanda’s interests in 17 countries.

Rwanda is an active member of 200 international organizations, and 47 embassies are based in Kigali.

Additionally, there are 31 diplomats representing international organizations in Rwanda, 22 diplomats representing the interests of different countries, while 71 countries are represented by non-resident envoys in Rwanda.