RWANDA-AID: NGOs Unsure About Kigali’s Change of Heart

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Feb 25 1996 (IPS) - Western non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that moved here after Rwanda’s government kicked them out in December have reacted with caution, and some with suspicion, to signs that Kigali may be thinking of allowing them to return.

In a letter sent last week to some Western aid agencies, Rwanda’s Rehabilitation Minister Patrick Mazimpaka apologised for the expulsions and called for increased cooperation. “The government would like to clear the misunderstanding and continue building a working relationship with aid agencies,” he said.

The NGOs were sceptical about Kigali’s apparent change of heart, especially since Mazimpaka’s letter did not state explicitly that the Rwandan government was inviting them to return. However, they appeared anxious not to jeopardise their chances of eventually returning by going on record as expressing their doubts.

“It’s still too early to comment,” said a spokesman for a leading French relief NGO here. “We haven’t been contacted by the authorities in Kigali yet.” Another believed it was nothing but a public relations exercise. “I think the government just wants to improve its image after expelling the NGOs,” he said.

In December, the Rwandan government, angered at what it saw as the political bias and inefficiency of some aid agencies, gave them a week to leave, freezing their bank accounts and cutting off telephone lines to make sure they obeyed its order.

Some went back to Europe. Others relocated to Kenya and Tanzania, where they have continued to help refugees from Rwanda and Burundi.

The majority of those expelled were from Belgium and France, blamed by the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF)-led government for the 1994 massacres in Rwanda, in which up to a million people are said to have died.

France armed the government of late president Juvenal Habyarimana, whose death in April 1994 set off the massacres, and French soldiers had helped Habyarimana’s forces resist the RPF after the then rebel force invaded Rwanda from Uganda in 1990.

The RPF also accused France of arming the Hutu militias that played a major role in the killings and whose victims were mainly people from Rwanda’s Tutsi minority and moderate Hutus. The massacres ended in July 1994 when the RPF ousted the Hutu extremist interim government that succeeded Habyarimana.

However, Rwanda’s government has made it clear that it has no quarrel with NGOs as a whole. Colonel Frank Mugambage, who is attached to the president’s office in Kigali, said in a statement obtained by IPS on Friday that more than 100 NGOs are engaged in humanitarian activities in his country.

These include the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), one of whose spokespersons here told IPS: “We have never appeared in the black list of the Rwanda government. We have been operating in Rwanda throughout the difficult period of 1994 and we have never stopped working there since then”.

And while U.N. peacekeepers are extremely unpopular in Rwanda – mainly because many Rwandans feel the United Nations left them to die by pulling out the bulk of its troops at the height of the massacres – U.N. aid agencies appear welcome there.

“We have excellent relations with the Rwanda government,” said Brenda Barton of the World Food Programme (WFP). “We are funding a lot of rehabilitation projects for returnees and displaced people there. Besides, we had been paying the salaries of civil servants, teachers and social workers with food.”