“Although its per-capita GDP has undergone a tenuous growth from $416 in 1994 to $1,284 in 2011, farm sizes and food production capacities have decreased since the 1980s, owing to the resettlement of displaced people. The only real progress the industrial sector has recorded is that it has stagnated rather than shrunk.”
By ‘Fisayo Soyombo
Wednesday was a sombre day at the United Nations, where top diplomats lit white candles and observed a minute of silence in memory of several hundred thousand Rwandans and foreign nationals who were put down in one of the world’s deadliest genocides 18 years ago.
The genocide, a killing spree that lasted approximately 100 days, began on April 6, 1994, in a state-authored bellicose response to the assassination of Rwandan President, Juvenal Habyarimana, and his Burundian counterpart, Cyprien Ntaryamira (plus ten other high-ranking public figures), who were mysteriously gunned down as their plane prepared to land in the capital city of Kigali.
Till date, the genocide is still being described both as a continuation of the Rwanda Civil War perceived to have ended with the signing of the Arusha Accords on 4th August 1993 on the one hand, and a separate outbreak of violence fuelled only fuelled by the initial war on the other hand.
The war that began on 1st October, 1990 was itself the result of a power struggle between the Tutsi minority ethnic group basically comprising Ugandan returnee-refugees and the Hutu majority group, which had ruled for nearly three decades on the back of two successive putsches.
Diplomats at Wednesday’s remembrance vowed to deliver justice to victims and survivors of the genocide by apprehending runaway Rwandan killers.
“United Nations was established in the shadow of a genocide — the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews during World War II,” recalled U.S. Ambassador, Susan Rice. “It suffered an enormous blow to its credibility and effectiveness in the face of another genocide, the one we’re gathered to commemorate today.”
Recollecting the first indication that a genocide had indeed begun in the east-central African nation, she re-echoed the words of the U.N. peacekeeping mission chief, Canadian Maj.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire, who was called to the morgue room of a Kigali hospital.
“In a dark room, the beam of his flashlight revealed what was left of 10 Belgian peacekeepers, mutilated beyond recognition. In the same hospital, 100 times that number of innocent Rwandans lay dead. And this was just the beginning.”
Lending his voice to the sorrowful remembrance, the U.N. Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, in a taped message while en route to Europe, said: “To those who persist in suppressing their fellow citizens, who cry out for dignity and freedom, we send a clear message: justice must be done.”
But beyond the usual elegant rhetorics and diplomatic sloganeering emblematic of such emotional occasions, what is the lot of an economy still smarting from the loss of about a million lives and reeking from an economic downturn that it is has truly never recovered from, 18 years after?
Although its per-capita GDP has undergone a tenuous growth from $416 in 1994 to $1,284 in 2011, farm sizes and food production capacities have decreased since the 1980s, owing to the resettlement of displaced people. The only real progress the industrial sector has recorded is that it has stagnated rather than shrunk.
In the end, what the United Nations will need to do for Rwanda — indeed, if it genuine has any such intention — is to render sustainable assistance in growing the impoverished country’s economy. But to target the apprehension of genocide fugitives some (or majority) of whom have walked freely for nearly 20 years is to merely patronise the African continent.
Image via CIAT
