Reconciliation still main challenge

Rwanda’s charge d’affaires at the UN in Geneva, Canisius Kananura, has said the government’s main challenge is to reconcile the three ethnic groups in the country. He told the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that while Rwanda was continuing to make “tireless efforts” to eliminate discrimination, the country had not yet healed fully from the 1994 genocide. Kananura said the government had reestablished the rule of law and established commissions on unity and reconciliation, and on legal and constitutional issues. Parliamentary power had been divided among eight political parties and, while the transitional period of government had been extended last year for an additional four years, an electoral commission would be established in 2001 to prepare for free elections “within the next few years”, he added.

Peter Nobel, the committee member who served as the UN committee’s rapporteur on Rwanda, said there remained serious problems with the administration of justice, and especially judicial independence, as well the presence of some 4,500 minors among an estimated prison population of over 120,000. Other committee members suggested that the UN Security Council should take urgent disarmament measures (such as happened in Kosovo) and that the Rwandan government should consider an amnesty to all, since “forgiving is not forgetting”.