UN expert says genocide trauma remains

The Rwandan public remained traumatised from the 1994 genocide, and that affected people’s behaviour, thinking and actions, Michel Moussalli, Special Representative on Rwanda for the UN High Commission for Human Rights, told the body’s annual session in Geneva on Thursday. The institutions and the authorities of Rwanda should be encouraged “to put in place conditions under which the population could look forward to peace, coexistence and reconciliation”, a UN press statement quoted Moussalli as saying. He said the government’s efforts to promote human rights were commendable, and that some of them were already bearing fruit. Nevertheless, “those efforts risked being in vain if the countries of the region did not come forward to resolve the profound crisis among them and the mortal conflict which had affected all their populations”, Moussalli added.

Rwandan Justice Minister Jean de Dieu Mucyo told the commission that peaceful coexistence required justice, and “one of the problems in bringing those responsible to court was that there were so many guilty people”. Rwanda was in the process of resolving this through a compromise between traditional and conventional justice, he said. He urged UN member states to arrest presumed murderers in their territories so that they could be tried. Since the international community bore some responsibility for the tragic events of 1994, it was legitimate for Rwanda to seek assistance in the form of a mini-Marshall Plan for economic and social recovery, Mucyo added.