IGIHE

Category: News

  • Vocational School Opens at Nkombo Island

    {{The UK envoy to Rwanda, Ben Llwellyn Jones Obe inaugurated October 17, a Vocational Training School at Nkombo Island in Rusizi District with another school which educated former street children in Gihundwe Sector.}}

    Both Schools were built by a NGO, Rwanda Aid, which works in the remote south west region of Rwanda, in the districts of Rusizi and Nyamasheke.

    About Frw64 Million was used to construct the school at Nkombo
    Residents noted that the school is going to play a role in the social economic development.

    HE. Ben Llwellyn Jones told residents of the Island to commit more to sustainable management of the school adding practical courses to be provided with the school will economically transform their area.

  • Recounting Gadhafi’s Last Bloody Moments

    {{For more than three minutes, you see a mob of enraged men toss Moammar Gadhafi around like a broken mannequin.

    His body and face bloody, his black bushy hair a crazy mess, the 69-year-old is pummeled. His shirt is ripped open to reveal a pudgy belly.}}

    The cell phone capturing the scene focuses on a gulf of red spreading across the Libyan dictator’s backside as someone stabs him in the rear with a bayonet.

    It didn’t take long before the video was uploaded to the Internet, and the world’s news organizations were broadcasting it.

    The end of the eight-month uprising in 2011, inspired by the toppling of regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, seemed to have come to a grotesque end on October 20.

    It’s still not officially clear how Gadhafi died because there’s never been a formal investigation, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday in a 50-page report that details his death and the events leading up to it.

    The rights group has obtained witness accounts and examined amateur videos shot with cell phones. One of the famous images captured on the day the mob got Gadhafi shows a young man holding a golden pistol triumphantly in the air as he’s cheered.

    A storyline heavily repeated in the media is that the fallen dictator was shot in the head with his own gilded weapon.

    The killing of Gadhafi and the fall of his Libya is a dramatic story, but it’s missing one very important part.

    The rights group says the militiamen who ravaged Gadhafi and captured, tortured and killed his loyalists are possibly responsible for war crimes because killing someone in detention is recognized as such under international law.

    HRW lambastes Libya’s current transitional government, saying it has taken no serious steps in investigating or prosecuting anti-Gadhafi militias.

    If Libya is going to truly rid itself of violence and extremists — a timely demand considering last month’s U.S. consulate attack — justice, the group believes, must be meted out on all sides.

    In February 2011, protesters took to the streets in Libya. They demanded peacefully that Gadhafi step down. His 42 years of hardline rule had to end.

    A man who rarely embraced reality, Gadhafi retorted, “All my people…love me.”

    As rallies continued, Gadhafi responded by ordering his forces to fire into the crowds. The movement descended into a violent uprising that dragged on for months.

    By March, the opposition gained a foothold in the city of Benghazi. In response, Gadhafi’s forces closed in on the city.

    At the United Nations, the Security Council passed a resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya and authorized the use of “all necessary measures” — except an occupation — to protect civilians from the violence raging in their country.

    In August, as Tripoli looked ever more fragile, Gadhafi, his crew and his sons jumped into cars and sped off in various directions.

    Khamis Gadhafi, active in his father’s regime, was killed in a NATO airstrike as he tried to skip town.

    Another son, Saif al-Islam, managed to make his way to the Misrata suburb of Bani Walid, surrounded by desert.

    Al-Islam later told Human Rights Watch that a NATO airstrike had left him mildly wounded. He was captured in November near Libya’s border.

    National security adviser Mutassim Gadhafi, another son, made it safely to Sirte, his father’s hometown.

    That’s where the dictator and his crew headed, also.
    Senior security adviser Mansour Dhao was in tow, he told Human Rights Watch, as well as Gadhafi’s personal guard, driver and a bunch of other bodyguards.

    Libya’s intelligence chief was there, but only briefly, because he was dispatched hundreds of miles to the south of Sirte. His job? He had to tell Khamis’ mother that her son was dead.

  • David Cameron Defends Aid to Rwanda

    {{Though, David Cameron has been pressed to say why the government unfroze aid to Rwanda, during Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons.}}

    Cameron replied that Rwanda has been, and continues to be, a success story of a country that has moved from genocide and disaster to become a role model for development and lifting people out of poverty in Africa.

    Cameron told BBC “And I’m proud of the fact that the last government and this government have continued to invest in that success”.

    “……. but I continue to believe that investing in Rwanda’s success as one of those countries in Africa that’s showing you can break the cycle of poverty, you can improve conditions for people, is something that we are right to do.” Cameron said.

    Earlier this month, the Rwandan High Commissioner to the UK, Ernest Rwamucyo has said, the basis for suspending aid to Rwanda is not justified particularly because the aid goes to development and has nothing to do with the allegations of fuelling conflict in Congo.

    Rwamucyo also said that Rwanda put a very comprehensive response to the accusations leveled by the UN report.

    “Our response was very clear where the facts were wrong, and also the fact that the report was submitted without allowing Rwanda to respond to the allegations”.

    The High Commissioner also talked about Rwanda Peace Keeping and Support Operations in other parts of the world.

    Rwandan peace keepers are deployed in Darfur, South Sudan, Haiti, Chad, and Liberia and were involved in stabilizing the Comoro’s.

    “This is a conscience and deliberate decision Rwanda took because of our immediate history of the genocide and suffering, that we feel others shouldn’t endure if conflict can be mitigated,” the envoy continued to explain.

  • EAPCCO: Rwanda Handsover to Uganda

    {{Rwanda has handed over to Uganda the chairmanship of the Eastern Africa Police Chiefs Cooperation Organisation (EAPCCO).}}

    The Inspector General of Police, Emmanuel K. Gasana on October 17th handed EAPCCO chairmanship to his Ugandan counterpart, Lt. Gen Kale Kayihura after successfully completing his one-year term.

    IGP Gasana called for member states to invest in IT and scientific led policing and the need for a law enforcement school for Africa to harmonize policing standards.

  • Ngororero Residents Resolve to take Part in Planning

    {{Ngororero district officials have resolved that the views of the community must take center stage in the implementation of the district performance contracts.}}

    Officials said that this will enable residents to own and fully participate in the 2012-2013 performance contracts.

    This was one of the resolutions taken by the district officials during a meeting with sector leaders on the implementation of community development programs.

    Emmanuel Mazimpaka, the vice mayor in charge of economic affairs, said that the performance contracts must be elaborated to the community in order to stimulate ideas from the residents on how to implement the set targets.

    Mazimpaka noted that this is one way of giving value to residents and encouraging them to be responsible over their community’s development.

    Sector officials say that the mindset of residents towards developing the community has changed over the years and despite that some of the targeted activities in the performance contracts require more funding.

  • Woman Starves Step Daughter for a Month

    {{Police in Gicumbi District have arrested a 25-year old woman identified as Mukandayisenga Devota accused of starving her 12-year old step daughter Diane Ingabire, for about a month.}}

    Mukandayisenga who was arrested on October 15 is detained at Mulindi Police Station.

    It is reported that while Mukandayisenga’s husband, Mbonyinshuti was in Kigali for his usual work related activities, the indicted Mukandayisenga locked up Ingabire in her house, tied and denied her anything to drink or eat for a period of one month.

    Police says local residents together with village leaders while on a communal work near Mukandayisenga’s house heard someone groaning inside the house and had no option but to break into the house and rescued the girl.

    Her body already decomposing,she was rushed to Byumba hospital.
    Rwanda National Police (RNP) Spokesperson in the Northern Region Superintendent Francis Gahima condemned this criminal act and urged the public to play their role in protecting children rights.

  • UN Demands Probe into Darfur Mission Attack

    {{Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, has demanded an investigation after one peacekeeper was killed and three others wounded in an ambush in Sudan’s North Darfur state.}}

    Martin Nesirky, Ban’s spokesman, said on Wednesday that all the victims from the African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) had South African nationality.

    “The secretary general urges the government of the Sudan to conduct a full investigation and to ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice,” a statement from Ban said.

    “The secretary general expresses his condolences to the government of the Republic of South Africa, UNAMID and to the family of the fallen peacekeeper.”

    A joint statement from the 15 members of the UN Security Council condemned the attack in the strongest terms, and called on the Sudanese authorities “to swiftly investigate the incident and bring the perpetrators to justice.”

    Wednesday’s ambush occurred while a UNAMID convoy of military, police and civilian personnel was heading to assess the situation following recent reports of violence near the village of Hashaba, the mission said.

    Hashaba is in Kutum district, the scene of unrest since early August when a district chief was shot dead during a carjacking attempt.

    It was the second deadly ambush this month involving UNAMID peacekeepers.

    Four Nigerian UNAMID peacekeepers were killed on October 2 in an attack near El-Geneina, in West Darfur state.

    UNAMID has been in Sudan’s far-western Darfur region for more than four years with a mandate to protect civilians in a region where rebel-government clashes, banditry and inter-tribal fighting continues, though violence is less than when rebels began an insurrection nearly a decade ago.

  • Rwanda Says UN Group of Experts Pursuing Political Agenda

    {{Rwanda’s foreign minister today expressed disappointment that the UN Group of Experts on the DRC continued to engage in a determined political campaign to indict Rwanda.}}

    “The leak of the final report of the Group of Experts confirms what Rwanda has maintained ever since Hege’s incendiary anti-Rwanda writings came to our attention: he is pursuing a political agenda that has nothing to do with getting at the true causes of conflict in the eastern DRC.”

    Mushikiwabo pointed out that any effort to engage constructively with Hege has been twisted out of context and used against Rwanda.

    “Rwanda will not allow itself to be dragged any deeper into this farce by responding to the Group’s far-fetched but fact-free assertions.” said Minster Louise Mushikiwabo

    “Every UN member-state should find cause for concern that these expert panels feel entitled to treat sovereign states in such an appalling fashion.

    Who are these unelected, unaccountable individuals to abuse the authority granted to them by the UN to pursue political vendettas and deny even basic procedural fairness to a country like Rwanda, a member of the United Nations for half a century?” Mushikiwabo said.

    A DC-based law firm, Akin Gump, agrees with Rwanda’s assessment that the UN Group of Experts has abused its powers in the course of pinning blame on Kigali for the DRC conflict. Among other shortcomings, the law firm found that the Group of Experts were guilty of ” lack of transparency, the reliance on questionable sources and the complete lack of analysis of witness bias, motivation, or contradictory evidence.”

    Mushikiwabo pointed out that Rwanda was focused on engaging with other countries of the region, including the DRC, to bring about a lasting solution to the crisis – a peace process that has already led to a two- month cease-fire.

    “We are fully committed to the ongoing ICGLR process — the problems in DRC didn’t emerge overnight and can’t be fixed overnight, but there is a strong belief that a regional solution is not only the best way forward — it is the only way forward.”

  • Exclusive interview: Louise Mushikiwabo

    {{The government of Rwanda has confirmed to Metro that it may pursue legal action against a United Nations-appointed Group of Experts that has accused the small central African nation of stoking a military rebellion in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.}}

    Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said in an exclusive interview yesterday that the expert panel has been “hijacked” by the political agenda of its coordinator, Steven Hege, who Rwanda says has a long history of opposition to the nation’s government.

    {{“We will not take this kind of treatment lying down,” Mushikiwabo told Metro.}}

    You have vigorously criticized not only the U.N. reports compiled by the Group of Experts accusing Rwanda of supporting the M-23 rebel militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but also the methodology employed in these reports — and, above all, “bias” on the part of the group’s coordinator.

    We have endeavored to be objective in our assessment of Mr. Hege. To this end, we employed the Washington, D.C., law firm Akin Gump to review Mr. Hege’s prior writings on Rwanda as well as the genocidal army and militia which killed more than 1 million people in a veritable Holocaust over three summer months in 1994.

    The fact-based evidence, which was vetted by Akin Gump and submitted to the Security Council, in the case of Hege, is damning in the extreme and should have disqualified him from taking the position as coordinator of the Group of Experts in the first place.

    {{What has Hege written prior to taking up his position as coordinator?}}

    First and foremost, Hege has served as an out-and-out apologist for the remnants of the very genocidal forces who, after committing their genocidal crimes, became known as the FDLR after taking refuge into the eastern DRC when they were chased out of Rwanda in 1994.

    Hege characterizes the FDLR militia, whose leaders are either under indictment at the International Criminal Court at the Hague or on trial in Germany, as if its members are somehow victims, and not perpetrators, of mass atrocities.

    In this “fact sheet” written in 2009 and entitled “Understanding the FDLR,” Hege also described, falsely, the current Rwandan government as made up of illegitimate outsiders, a “Ugandan Tutsi elite,” and that peace in our region is only possible “when international opinion eventually sours on the Rwandan regime.”

    With this objective in mind, Hege’s hatchet job, on the platform which the UN report has accorded him, becomes frighteningly clear.

    The reports which he and the Group of Experts have submitted to the UN Sanctions Committee wouldn’t pass muster in the lowest imaginable court of law.

    As Akin Gump concluded, “The lack of transparency, the reliance on questionable sources and the complete lack of analysis of witness bias, motivation or contradictory evidence in the conclusions reached [make] those conclusions highly unreliable.”

    {{Are you saying Mr. Hege isn’t entitled to his point of view?}}

    Of course, Mr. Hege is entitled to his views as a private citizen. But his extremist views are now well known in Africa because of the platform he has been given by the United Nations.

    Referencing Hege’s call, in a 2010 issues paper, for ethnic minority groups to preference their economic and other interests in favor of the majority population, regardless of circumstance; according to perhaps the leading newspaper in East Africa, Hege’s writing that certain ethnic groups “must clear a higher bar of citizenship is central to racial ideology everywhere, whether in the form of anti-Semitism of the persecution of Japanese Americans in World War II.”

    Hege knows that he is exposed on the matter of his prior writings. When this publication was discovered by the media in July, Hege pulled it from the Internet.

    I want to put the entire matter with Hege into its proper perspective. Yes, the methodology employed by the Group of Experts is wholly flawed. But, above all, what we have here is the moral disgrace committed in the name of the U.N. A sympathizer or, more accurately, apologist of genocide perpetrators has been put in a position to sit in judgment of the victims, the Rwandan people.

    {{Are you suggesting a bigger U.N.?problem here?}}

    Yes, I am. It is clear that the U.N. process for the appointment and vetting of “experts” is broken and in desperate need of repair. The failed expert selection on Congo, which has somehow turned into an indictment of Rwanda, is but one of a number of recent miscarriages of justice of the same kind hurting African countries, including expert panels on Cote d’Ivoire and Somalia-Eritrea.

    The time has now come for the international community to know about the treatment being meted out to powerless countries like Rwanda through unjust, outdated and punitive international mechanisms such as the U.N. Group of Experts when it falls into the hands of individuals with a personal political agenda.

    {{What is the status of the conflict in the eastern Congo?}}

    Eleven countries of the region, including Rwanda and the DRC, are joining forces to bring about a lasting solution to the crisis. This includes deploying a neutral force to monitor the borders between the eastern DRC and its neighbors.

    It also includes a “joint verification mechanism,” which is a way to test the truth or otherwise the many claims and counter-claims that circulate during periods of instability.

    The regional peace process has led to a two- month cease-fire, and there is overwhelming consensus that the only way out of the mess is a political solution, not a military one. It is a complex part of the world.

    There are dozens of armed groups running riot, and the state of governance is weak. The prob­lems didn’t emerge overnight and can’t be fixed overnight, but there is a strong belief that a regional solution is not only the best way forward — it is the only way forward.

    {{Official statement}}

    Metro contacted the U.N. for comment. The organization’s official statement is: Until all of Steve Hege’s findings on Rwanda are final and published, the U.N. has no comment on the matter.

  • 234 Million Africans Hungry

    {{Nearly 870 million people worldwide are suffering from hunger and chronic undernourishment in 2010-2012, with 98% of this number living in developing countries and 27% to be found in Africa.}}

    The official World Food Day theme, announced each spring by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), gives focus to World Food Day observances and raises awareness and understanding of approaches to ending hunger.

    “Agricultural cooperatives – key to feeding the world” is the formal wording of the 2012 theme. It has been chosen to highlight the role of cooperatives in improving food security and contributing to the eradication of hunger.

    Interest in cooperatives and rural organizations is also reflected in the decision of the UN General Assembly to designate 2012 the International Year of Cooperatives.

    This year’s celebration comes at a critical juncture when a part of the continent is recovering from the devastation wrought by the drought in the Horn of Africa, and the Sahel braces for severe food shortages in the coming months.

    It is clear that the role of cooperatives and community organizations are critical in the fight for food security in Africa. Cooperatives satisfy their members’ needs while pursuing profit and sustainability.

    They are often a key institution in rural life and for the marketing of farmer inputs and produce. Cooperatives are also crucial for fostering democracy and good governance at the local level.

    With increasing threats to the use of Africa’s natural resource base and the growing foreign direct investment in land in the continent, cooperatives can play a significant role in defending farmer interest in the long term by fostering sustainable agricultural practices that ensure these natural resource assets are safe for future generations.

    The African Development Bank, through its agriculture, governance and private sector departments, is well placed to support the renaissance of the cooperative movement towards truly profit seeking entities working for agricultural transformation in Africa.

    The Bank undertakes to channel, where feasible, the use of local development funds in projects and programs through existing and credible agricultural cooperatives on the continent.