RWANDA: Financial Problems Cloud Prospects for U.N. Rights Team

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 16 1996 (IPS) - The United Nations’ barren treasury is thinning the ranks of the U.N. human rights office in Rwanda at a time when its work is crucial, its director told IPS Thursday.

“We have 89 international personnel in the field at the moment, which is down from 120 when I arrived last October,” Ian Martin said Thursday while on a visit here. Every time an officer leaves, he added, the post remains vacant — another casualty of the U.N. budget crunch.

“We still haven’t been able to replace people because of our financial situation,” Martin said. It is “anyone’s guess” whether the office will be fully staffed over the coming year, he added.

The United Nations, which is owed some three billion dollars in regular and peacekeeping dues by its member states, has begun to curtail its operations worldwide, and the U.N. human rights offices are feeling the pinch.

Haitian President Rene Preval has asked the popular U.N. human rights office in Haiti, called MICIVIH, to remain in the country beyond its scheduled end this month. U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali says he hopes to comply.

But MICIVIH likely will be cut in half, to 32 officers from 64, purely because of budgetary problems, U.N. spokeswoman Sylvana Foa said Thursday.

The Rwanda field office has proved similarly popular with the government in Kigali. Although the Rwandan government insists that the 1,200 U.N. peacekeepers in Rwanda leave by March 8, President Pasteur Bizimungu’s administration wants the human rights staff to continue working.

“As far as our operation is concerned, the government is very clear that they want us to remain,” Martin said. He attributed recent reports of government friction with other U.N. officials — including an assault earlier this month on three members of an international tribunal sent to investigate the 1994 genocide — to misunderstandings.

Manzi Bakuramutsa, Rwanda’s U.N. ambassador, also chalked up recent reports of a rift between the government and the United Nations to misunderstandings. But he told IPS that some U.N. officers, including the peacekeepers of the U.N. Assystance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), have worn out their welcome.

“UNAMIR has been very arrogant,” Bakuramutsa said. He argued the peacekeepers were dealing with “liberators of a country” — the Rwandese Popular Army (RPA), which seized control of the nation in July 1994 and ended three months of brutal massacres — whom they did not treat with respect.

As a result, said Charles Ntakirutanka, Rwanda’s minister for public works and energy, UNAMIR should leave when its mandate expires next month. But he added that some U.N. presence is needed to assist the Rwandan government with rebuilding the tattered nation.

Martin agreed that what Rwanda needs most is to rebuild its judicial and legal infrastructure following the collapse of its entire civil society during the 1994 massacres.

“The key problem is the lack of institutions that deal with human rights,” he said. Most of the nation’s judges were either killed in the genocide or fled with the former government, which has maintained power over some 1.8 million refugees encamped just outside Rwanda’s borders.

Without judges, the country has been unable to try some 66,000 people arrested for suspected complicity in the genocide. Those prisoners remain confined in jails which were designed to hold less than a quarter that amount.

“The number of detainees continues to grow,” Martin said, noting that a potential exodus of refugees if Zaire closes its border camps might worsen the situation.

“There has been some amelioration of conditions in the prisons as a result of funding from the international community,” which helped construct some temporary detention sites, he added. But, he argued, “Very little has happened in terms of releases since the justice system is not functioning.”

Despite that, he remains confident that Rwanda’s new multi- ethnic government is trying its best to bolster the country’s human rights climate.

“I believe the government is making serious efforts to make sure that the conduct of the RPA at the local level is disciplined,” he said.

Bakuramutsa agreed, noting the government’s arrest of RPA soldiers who violate human rights, including the three soldiers who assaulted the U.N. tribunal officers.

Ntakirutanka added that the government also intends to lure refugees back by rebuilding and refurbishing the country’s housing stock, which was badly depleted during the destructive 1994 massacres.