Minister seeks intervention on child rights

Rwanda’s Justice Minister Jean de Dieu Mucyo last week appealed to international organisations to intervene in the fate of children who were evacuated at the height of the country’s 1994 civil war and who are now being kept away from their natural parents. He told a two-day consultative seminar organised by his ministry and UNICEF that his ministry had been receiving letters of complaint from parents and relatives of the children because the foster parents refused them access to their children, the Rwanda New Agency (RNA) reported. “This is a serious problem and we are calling upon UNICEF, Avocats sans Frontieres (Lawyers without borders) and all other humanitarian organisations to look into this and assist Rwanda in making those people understand and let the children meet or reunite with their natural parents and relatives,” he said. Mucyo said the Rwandan government will in “no way accept this”. He gave the example of children from the Mugesera area of southern Rwanda who were flown to Italy in 1994, saying that it “has been learnt that the Italian courts of law have declared and ruled that the children will belong to the foster parents”. He said Rwanda will appeal against the Italian court’s ruling. UNICEF, for its part, told IRIN it had no position on the issue yet.