- 'We have no influence'. International discourse and the instrumentalisation of transitional justice | Stability
- Burundi may soon reach yet another crossroads in its tumultuous history and on its path towards transitional justice. A contentious draft law for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission awaits approval by the country’s National Assembly, which has raised a number of concerns about the independence of the eventual commission, the likelihood of popular participation in the process and the prospects for criminal justice. But as this practice note seeks to demonstrate, the international community in Burundi may in fact be contributing to the instrumentalisation of the process. The note highlights how the discourse of the international community may partially facilitate a certain duplicity among influential figures within the current government, particularly with respect to compliance with stipulations under the 2000 Arusha Peace Agreement. Two common rationalisations in particular are explained that have seemingly emerged among the international community with respect to transitional justice and that are at the heart of this instrumentalisation: outside imposition and a lack of influence. The note argues that since transitional justice can no longer be regarded as an apolitical process, international actors must be more cognisant of their actions and discourse with a view to ensuring credible transitional justice processes in contexts like Burundi.
- tags: burundi transitional justice international community analysis
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The Price of Precious - conflict minerals | National Geographic
The minerals in our electronic devices have bankrolled unspeakable violence in the Congo.
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Peacebuilding in post-conflict societies increasingly encompasses memorialisation and practices of remembrance. Memorials that commemorate incidents of mass atrocity have been claimed as spaces for intervention by outside actors, and international support has often been decisive for their creation. While external involvement is driven by a desire for solid statements about the violent past, it is increasingly recognised that memorials are on the contrary sites for the ongoing production of meaning in the present; sites used both for mourning and for making politics. This article interrogates the productive encounter between external actors' globalised template for remembering and desire, and local processes of remembrance. The argument is illustrated by cases studies of the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre in Rwanda.
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Rwanda's recent elections were a sheer wasteful circus, like previous ones since Paul Kagame came to power in Kigali. The ruling party has a choke-hold on the country's politics. Progressive forces have a difficult task to truly free Rwanda
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Imihigo: Do the scores reflect what’s on ground? | The New Times
When results showing how districts across the country had fared in the implementation of performance contracts (Imihigo) during the fiscal year 2012/13 were released last month, some people doubted their authenticity.
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The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) were created to deliver accountability for the atrocities committed during Rwanda's genocide of 1994 and Sierra Leone's civil war of the 1990s. The capacity of these courts, however, like other international criminal tribunals, is limited in terms of the number of persons they can prosecute. If most perpetrators evade justice, the ability of international tribunals to deliver accountability may be seriously undermined. To mitigate this risk, national justice systems should deal with the perpetrators who are not addressed by international tribunals. When national systems do not do so (or fail to do so effectively), international tribunals are well placed to encourage (or improve) national atrocity-related judicial proceedings, thereby increasing their chances of delivering accountability. This article assesses empirically the impact of the ICTR and SCSL on national atrocity-related judicial proceedings in their target countries, thus contributing to an overall assessment of these tribunals. The article also compares the national impact of the ‘pure international’ ICTR to that of the ‘hybrid’ SCSL and tries to identify features that affect the national impact of an international tribunal. Understanding the interactions between international and national justice systems, and the features that affect the national impact of international tribunals, is particularly important given the shift to ‘positive complementarity’ at the International Criminal Court.
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Cooperative membership and agricultural performance: Evidence from Rwanda | Working Papers Bioeconomics
Agricultural policies in Rwanda focus on agricultural intensification and increased market orientation of the smallholder farm sector. Cooperatives are seen as key vehicles in this but little is known about their effectiveness to achieve these goals. In this paper we analyze the impact of cooperative membership on agricultural performance for rural households in Rwanda. Cross-sectional household data, collected in 2012, are used to analyze the impact of cooperative membership on different agricultural performance indicators. We specifically look at the diversity in cooperatives and distinguish different types of cooperatives in several ways. We use several econometric techniques to deal with potential selection bias in estimating the impact of cooperative membership, including a proxy variable method based on a willingness to pay measure and propensity score matching (PSM) methods. We find that cooperative membership in general has a positive impact on different farm performance indicators but that these effects are driven be specific types of cooperatives.
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Rwanda Jumps to Top Ten On African Prosperity Index | allAfrica.com
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The jews of africa | Africa is a country
Last Sunday at Cooper Union’s Great Hall on Manhattan’s Lower West Side, hundreds of people–who paid between $20 and $10–gathered to watch a discussion by Elie Wiesel and the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, that was titled: “Genocide: Do the strong have an obligation to protect the weak?”
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Kagame: “Our Guy” or His Own Man? | Rising Continent
This is one of the many questions, people ask, reflecting on who the Rwandan president works for particularly looking at the scale of atrocities he is responsible of in the Great Lakes region for so many years.
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In this paper, I consider the strengths and weaknesses of including local actors in governance assessments through an analysis of the Rwandan Joint Governance Assessment (JGA) and its supporting institutions. The JGA is the first and only governance assessment produced and approved by donors and a recipient country. The approach is seen by many as a model to replicate elsewhere, because it combines donors' need to assess governance in the countries in which they work with a desire for context sensitivity and local ownership. However, local and/or joint approaches may also face a variety of problems ranging from implementation difficulties to the risk of political co-optation. The case study presented in this paper highlights the practical and political challenges faced during the implementation of the JGA and analyses to what extent these have the potential to compromise the approach. For both the donors and the recipient government, the process represents unknown terrain in which they continually struggle to position themselves. The findings also point to more general problems that can arise when international frameworks are embedded in local contexts.
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This study assessed the association between household family structure and early sexual debut among adolescent girls, ages 15–19, in rural Rakai District, Uganda. Early sexual debut is associated with detrimental physical, emotional, and social outcomes, including increased risk of HIV. However, research on the family’s role on adolescents’ sexual risk behaviors in sub-Saharan Africa has been minimal and rarely takes into account the varying family structures within which African adolescents develop. Using six rounds of survey data (2001–2008) from the Rakai Community Cohort Study, unmarried adolescent girls (n = 1940) aged 15–17 at their baseline survey, were followed until age 19. Parametric survival models showed that compared to adolescent girls living with both biological parents, girls who headed their own household and girls living with stepfathers, grandparents, siblings, or other relatives had significantly higher hazards of early sexual debut before age 16. Adolescent girls were significantly more likely to debut sexually if neither parent resided in the household, either due to death or other reasons. In addition, the absence of the living biological father from the home was associated with a higher risk of sexual debut, regardless of the biological mother’s presence in the home. Our study’s findings suggest that family structure is important to adolescent girls’ sexual behavior. There is need for research to understand the underlying processes, interactions, and dynamics of both low and high-risk family structures in order to devise and strategically target interventions for specific types of family structures.
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Northern Uganda Conflict Analysis | Saferworld
Six years after the guns fell silent, and months into the second iteration of the Peace, Recovery and Development Programme (PRDP), the question of whether northern Uganda is truly at peace remains unanswered in many people’s minds. An examination of regional and sub-regional conflict drivers by the three members of the Advisory Consortium on Conflict Sensitivity (ACCS) - International Alert, Refugee Law Project, Saferworld - over 2010-2012 aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of conflict drivers that have the potential to undermine development and peacebuilding efforts underway in PRDP II. It focuses on people’s perceptions of whether the PRDPs and associated interventions are increasing the likelihood of long-term peace and stability in the region.
