- Fields of Bitterness (I): Land Reform in Burundi | International Crisis Group
Burundi, whose population lives mainly in rural areas, is facing two land problems. The first is structural and due to poor land management, particularly in a context of high population growth, which generates violence and crime. The second is a legacy of the civil war that deprived hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced people of their properties. Only renewed focus and fresh thinking can help prevent rural criminal violence. However, instead of meaningful reform, only a review of the land code has been implemented. The impact of the absence of a comprehensive change in land governance, especially on conflict resolution, will continue to fuel public resentment, especially for those who have been dispossessed of their properties or have limited access to land ownership. The sense of injustice and the pressing need for land will likely contribute to future conflicts unless the government adopts a new approach.
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Fields of Bitterness (II): Restitution and Reconciliation in Burundi 2 | International Crisis Group
Depuis le début des années 2000, le Burundi est confronté au lourd héritage d’une longue guerre civile : la nécessité de réinstaller sur leurs terres des centaines de milliers de réfugiés et de déplacés injustement spoliés. Dans un contexte de tensions foncières dues à la forte croissance démographique et à la raréfaction des terres arables disponibles, la politique actuelle de restitution des terres, qui est essentielle pour la consolidation de la paix, est en train de la fragiliser et de réactiver les ressentiments à connotation ethnique. Celle-ci privilégie les droits des rapatriés au détriment des propriétaires actuels, qui ne sont pas tous des spoliateurs de guerre. Pour éviter la perception d’une restitution revancharde, une nouvelle politique de réconciliation foncière plus fidèle à l’accord de paix d’Arusha est indispensable.
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Tax in Africa: In conversation with Kieran Holmes | Africa Research Institute
Kieran Holmes is Commissioner General of Burundi’s semi-autonomous revenue authority, the Office Burundais des Recettes. Kieran recently co-authored an ARI report detailing OBR’s efforts to reform tax collection and administration in one of Africa’s poorest nations (available either in English or French). In this interview with ARI’s Jonathan Bhalla, Kieran discusses how the OBR has become a model institution but still faces serious financial uncertainty despite its many successes.
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Burundi's child sex slaves: 'I feel like I have been used and tossed away' | theguardian.com
Child intermediaries working for pimps recruit young girls who are then either forced into prostitution or sold abroad
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Alarm over Burundi’s planned constitution changes | African Confidential Magazine
Plans by Burundi’s government to make radical amendments to the constitution have raised the political temperature in a country striving to overcome the effects of a civil war fought between 1993 and 2005.
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Say No to War (2) – Young peace activists in rebel areas | Local Voices - Kivu Conflict
Despite the fact that their friends or parents have joined local militia groups, the young people from JMTAP, the Youth Musical and Theatrical Alliance for Peace, fight daily for peace and peaceful coexistence in North Kivu. This is a brave undertaking, carried out with an extraordinary energy, in areas where there are deadly confrontations between armed groups and intercommunity tensions remain high.
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Motorcycles and agricultural innovation | Congo Masquerade
The relatively inexpensive motorcycle made in India or China is the social innovation today that is contributing to change in the lives of rural farmers, especially those that live in isolated communities far from feeder roads. Eastern Congolese cities first introduced motorcycles for individual transport and as taxis. Usage has spread rapidly throughout the country.
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The Congolization Movement » | AFRICA IS A COUNTRY
On January 17th, a group of local artists (Pitcho Womba Konga, Fredy Massamba, Badi Ndeka, Caroline Dujardin, Kamanda Milele, Lety Kangaka, Jack Rémy, Karim Kalonji, Christian Levo, Malkia Mutiri and myself) pulled off “the Action” in L’Horloge Du Sud, better known as the Afro-European cultural spot in the center of Brussels. The date was chosen carefully to launch the “Congolization” artistic movement while remembering the assassination of Patrice Lumumba (he was murdered by a conspiracy of the Belgian and American governments along with General Mobutu).
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New information technologies can help unpack the relationships and tendencies that persist in complex networks. We present an interactive, web-based visualization that captures interlocking networks related to the Mouvement du 23 Mars (M23) rebel group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to demonstrate the utility of visually summarizing relationships in a multi-dimensional dataset. We draw exclusively from the findings the UN Group of Governmental Experts report S/2012/843 documenting the procurement of weapons and ammunition by the M23 network. The visualization was built using a hierarchical edge bundling algorithm (Holten 2006) implemented in Data-Driven Documents (d3) (Bostock 2011), an open-source JavaScript-based library for interactive web visualizations. We contend that such visualizations can provide improved understanding of complex social networks both within and beyond the confines of war.
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Will FDLR rebels ever leave DR Congo and return to Rwanda? | BBC
Twenty years since the genocide in Rwanda, the repercussions are still being felt across the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some of the million Hutus who fled from Rwanda were refugees but others were accused of taking part in the killing as members of the FDLR or so-called democratic forces for the liberation of Rwanda. Grainne Harrington has travelled to the DR Congo with a UN team which is trying to persuade the FDLR to return to Rwanda.
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Stromae on his Rwandan roots and the language of music | BBC News
Paul Van Haver, better known as Stromae, has taken the international music scene by storm. Born in Brussels to a Belgian mother and a Rwandan father - who was killed in the 1994 genocide - the 28-year old musician has recently released his second album, Racine Carree (Square Root). When BBC Africa's Sophie Ikenye met him in London, she began by asking him why he thinks his music is so popular even in non French-speaking countries.
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Why do we continually misunderstand conflict in Africa? – By Lucy Hovil | African Arguments
Violence in Africa seems particularly prone to the scourge of one-dimensional descriptions. Often described as ethnic or tribal, and sometimes as sectarian, the media prescribes an adjective that quickly becomes accepted as gospel and this explanation is then hard to shift.
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In defence of western journalists in Africa – By Michela Wrong | African Arguments
Articles attacking the Western media’s one-dimensional coverage have become almost as obligatory a part of African conflicts as stale-mated peace talks and UN funding appeals. Their writers usually just skirt shy of accusing the journalists concerned of racism, but that lacuna is helpfully filled by readers in the ‘Comments’ section.Academics enjoy word counts reporters can only dream about. Web-based news should in theory have loosened up space, in practice it rarely does, because editors know there’s a limit to how much information a general reader can absorb. Journalists use ‘reductive’ definitions because they don’t have the luxury of space. If you want to get any fresh information in your 600-word piece about modern-day Rwanda, then yes, you are going to summarise the 1994 genocide in one paragraph. You have to. More fundamentally, the writers seem to have lost sight of the definition of news, which aims to convey distant events to a non-specialist audience as succinctly as possible. That’s a lot easier to say than do.
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Rwanda : la seconde vie des sachets en plastique | Syfia Grands Lacs
Recycler les emballages en plastique jusqu'alors jetés dans les rues pour fabriquer des produits revendus localement, c'est ce que font de petites usines au Rwanda. Des opérations qui limitent la pollution et donnent du travail à de nombreux ramasseurs, laveurs de sachets, ouvriers…
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Will FDLR rebels ever leave Congo and return to Rwanda? | BBC News
Twenty years after the Rwandan genocide, some of those responsible are still wreaking havoc in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, where they are terrorising the local population and profiting from the area's rich natural resources. The BBC's Grainne Harrington reports on the UN's attempts to persuade them to lay down their weapons and return home.
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Essai | Rwanda : aux origines du génocide | Jeuneafrique.com
Les historiens Jean-Pierre Chrétien et Marcel Kabanda déconstruisent méthodiquement la théorie qui fut la matrice idéologique de la tragédie du génocide au Rwanda en 1994 dans un livre érudit sans être savant.
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Concerns as Rwanda high-ranking officials miss from anti-corruption probe list | East)African
Members of Parliament have expressed concern that only low-ranking officials are implicated in the country’s fight against corruption while the “big fish” are not brought to book.
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Three People to Watch in Rwanda | RwandaPost
Yesterday, the Africa Report compiled a list of three Rwandans to watch in the fields of business and politics. They are as follows:
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Clinton documents reveal response to Rwanda genocide criticism | theguardian.com
Newly released documents from the Clinton presidential library reveal how the administration worked to explain the often-criticised US response to genocide in Rwanda.
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Rwanda: Former Rebels Return | Pulitzer Center
Jean Pierre’s expression is hard, severe. His eyes are those of a man who has been fighting most of his life. He has spent the last few years across the border, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), hiding in the forest as a fugitive, raiding villages and attacking army outposts. After 20 years in the forest, Jean Pierre decided to lay down his weapon and give up his life of blood and violence. He showed up two months ago at MONUSCO (the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission) in the DRC, asking to be repatriated. Now Jean Pierre is living in a center set up for the reintegration of Hutu rebels into Rwandan society.
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The Continuing effects of the Rwanda genocide, by Hamada Elrasam | PANORAMA
Hundreds of orphans from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide still struggle in Kigali’s slums, often working as drug dealers or prostitutes to stay alive. In the lives of the people of the Giporoso district, we see how the 1994 genocide of the ethnic Tutsi and politically moderate Hutu peoples, as well as the ravages of HIV, continue to have long-lasting effects.
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The Darling Tyrant | POLITICO Magazine
The thing to know about Rwandan President Paul Kagame is not just that he is a dictator responsible for human rights abuses but that, despite this, he has a great many friends.
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Vasectomy is safe and highly effective; however it remains an underused method of family planning in Africa. In view of this, three Rwandan physicians were trained in no scalpel vasectomy (NSV) with thermal cautery and fascial interposition (TC & FI) on the prostatic end as vasectomy trainers in 2010 and this initiative has resulted in over 2900 vasectomy clients from February 2010 to December 2012. The vasectomy clients were mainly over age 40, had young children (< age 3), and were married and cohabiting. Limited financial resources, satisfaction with existing family size, and avoiding side effects from hormonal methods (wives’) were key motivators for vasectomy uptake. High rates of previous family planning (FP) use and high degree of inter-spousal communication are known correlates of higher FP use.
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The present research examined the differential relationship between distinct construals of collective victimhood—specifically, inclusive and exclusive victim consciousness—and intergroup attitudes in the context and aftermath of mass violence. Three surveys in Rwanda (N = 842), Burundi (N = 1,074), and Eastern DRC (N = 1,609) provided empirical support for the hypothesis that while exclusive victim consciousness predicts negative intergroup attitudes, inclusive victim consciousness is associated with positive, prosocial intergroup attitudes. These findings were significant when controlling for age, gender, urban/rural residence, education, personal victimization, and ingroup superiority. Additionally, exclusive victim consciousness mediated the effects of ingroup superiority on negative intergroup attitudes. These findings have important theoretical implications for research on collective victimhood as well as practical implications for intergroup relations in regions emerging from violent conflict.
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Rwanda Twenty Years On: The Dangers of Demography - By Mark Weston | African Arguments
Rwanda's progress since the genocide has been remarkable. Most importantly, the country has remained stable. But what is equally obvious to the outsider is that Rwanda is full up, and that the risks posed by its demography threaten to undermine the progress made.
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Genocide against the Tutsi: It’s now official - News -
Twenty years on, the United Nations Security Council has resolved that the 1994 genocide in Rwanda will now be referred to globally as the “Genocide against the Tutsi.”
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Yoweri Museveni: a dictator with nothing left to promise Uganda | The Observer
President embraces a twisted 'African morality' with willingness to trade anti-gay law for one more term in office
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Resource governance dynamics: The challenge of ‘new oil’ in Uganda | Resource Policy
Resource governance norms have evolved at multiple scales to counter the potential negative socio-economic, environmental and institutional impacts of the extractive industries. Advocates of these ‘good governance’ initiatives have sought to mainstream transparency throughout the extractive industries value chain and implement pro-poor projects at the site level. However, these types of resource governance interventions often fall short of their promised development benefits. Poorly understood is how the process of resource extraction and the expectation of supposed revenue windfalls affect the governance dynamics of host countries and localities. Using a qualitative and inductive approach this paper highlights emerging spaces of governance within a new petro-state, Uganda. The research findings highlight four significant governance gaps: lack of coherence among civil society organisations (CSOs); limited civil society access to communities and the deliberate centralisation of oil governance; industry-driven interaction at the local level; and weak local government capacity. The ad hoc and fragmented modes of resource governance in the oil bearing regions, particularly related to transparency and corporate social responsibility activities, do not bode well for this new petro-state’s development trajectory. By identifying how spaces of resource governance emerge in new resource contexts, more proactive and timely interventions can be designed and implemented by state and non-state actors.
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Is there space in between? Religion and armed conflict in African states | African Security Review -
The politicisation of religion in Africa is causing the international community growing concern, particularly the smouldering hatred between Muslims and Christians. The rising wave of religious violence across the continent has given rise to a proliferation of arms that has led to armed struggle in many African states. This paper sets out to examine the recurring issue of religion and armed conflicts in some African states. It will consider two monotheistic religions – Christianity and Islam – and the way they have interacted with each other in the region. And, finally, it examines the different ways in which religious activities are related to armed conflict in northern Nigeria, northern Uganda, Sudan, Somalia and Rwanda.
