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Three ex-ministers transferred to Arusha

    NAIROBI

    Three ex-ministers of the former Rwandan government, arrested in Cameroon this April, have been transferred to the detention facilities of International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, the independent Hirondelle news agency reported. The three - former foreign minister Jerome Bicamumpaka, former commerce and industry minister Justin Mugenzi and former civil service minister Prosper Mugiraneza - were members of the 1994 interim government. They are charged with genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity. Also charged with them is former health minister Casimir Bizimungu who was arrested in Kenya and has been held in Arusha since February.

    Additional military training needed - Kagame

    Rwandan Vice-President Paul Kagame on Monday said the country had "good soldiers" but they needed "additional training which they could not acquire during the war period". Rwandan radio quoted Kagame as saying "time and material resources" were now available for better military training.

    WFP to preposition food stocks for returnees

    A recent meeting between UNHCR, WFP and the Rwandan government discussed modalities for the repatriation and reception of returnees from the DRC at Nkamira transit centre. WFP's latest weekly report said the meeting also agreed that the agency should preposition limited food stocks to cater for about 1,500 returnees a week. The agency estimates the number of Rwandan refugees in north Kivu and surrounding areas to be 30,000. UNHCR has registered over 7,000 returnees in Gisenyi.

    CARE commends government on forest initiative

    CARE International on Friday commended the Rwandan government's announcement to launch a programme aimed at sensitising citizens on the importance of protecting forests. A CARE statement said its experts were working with communities bordering Rwanda's "fragile" Virunga Park as well as heavily deforested areas in the southern parts of the country.

    "Protecting forests is essential to protecting livelihoods," CARE's natural resource management specialist Uwe Korus said. "Rwanda is a populous country and people desperately need land for firewood and for timber. But if they continue to exploit forests at the current rate, they will have neither." "The genocide and war destroyed the socio-political structures that protected the forests," Korus noted. "Communities are now so fragmented and people are so poor that it has become a major challenge to get people to work together to protect forests."

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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