Rwanda, 1993

I am experiencing a feeling of signal honour and

genuine pleasure, and also at the same time a deep feeling

as I now, on behalf of my country, Rwanda, speak before

this prestigious General Assembly of the United Nations,

which each year considers the fate of our world.

Above all, I should like to associate myself with the

eminent speakers who have spoken before me here, to

extend to you, Sir, on behalf of the delegation of which I am

the head, our warmest congratulations on your election to the

presidency of the United Nations General Assembly at its

forty-eighth session. We are assured that your personal

qualities and your extensive experience in international

issues will assist you in discharging this difficult

responsibility. Your personal qualities and your experience

are the best guarantee of the success of the work of the

present session. We also wish to congratulate all the other

members of the General Committee, who, we are sure, will

spare no effort in assisting you in successfully discharging

the difficult task entrusted to you. The delegation of the

Republic of Rwanda will spare no effort to participate

actively and effectively to ensure a successful conclusion of

the debate on the items on the agenda of this session.

Moreover, we wish to render a well-deserved tribute to

your predecessor, Mr. Stoyan Ganev, who was always

inspired by the same concern for effectiveness in the cause

of peace, justice and international security. He deserves our

deep gratitude for having guided with wisdom and

competence the work of the forty-seventh session of the

General Assembly.

We should also like to take advantage of this happy

opportunity to warmly welcome the presence here with us of

new Member States, the admission of which is an important

stage towards achieving the universality of the Organization.

The forty-eighth session of the United Nations General

Assembly is opening at a time when the world presents to us

a rather gloomy picture. Here and there are several scattered

islets of peace and prosperity but they are few indeed.

Moreover, in various corners of the world armed conflicts

and political tensions are ready to explode into open crisis

and economic and social ruin. In many countries we find

poverty and upheavals in the quest for more balanced

societies, and everywhere there is anguish in the face of so

many challenges which confront the conscience of man and

which spawn fear for the future.

Fortunately, good will is being demonstrated and

mobilized at the level of States, non-governmental

organizations, and regional and international organizations -

in the forefront of which is the United Nations - to arouse

the universal conscience, extinguish the fires, accompany

political change, allay misery and renew hope and the

enjoyment of life for those for whom the horizon seems

closed and gloomy.

It is an appropriate time and place to pay a sincere

tribute to the world Organization and to its tireless

Secretary-General, Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, for all the

actions undertaken and carried out with skill and designed to

restore peace in regions and countries devastated by war, to

prevent other conflicts, and to assist disadvantaged peoples

or those sorely tried by disasters of all types. To be sure,

the means are limited, but is not this Organization the last

hope of people?

And success nurtures that hope. Thus we welcome

enthusiastically the end of the civil war in Cambodia and the

re-establishment of State institutions in that country.

Rwanda welcomes the progress that has been made

towards a settlement of the conflict in Mozambique and is

following particularly closely the political developments in

South Africa. While the system of apartheid in the latter has

not yet been completely eliminated, recent developments

promise positive and rapid progress.

Rwanda is also most gratified at the very positive

course of the Middle East peace negotiations, which, thanks

to mutual recognition between Israel and the Palestine

Liberation Organization (PLO) and to the signing, in

Washington on 13 September 1993, of an agreement on

Palestinian autonomy in Gaza and Jericho, have just gone

through a very important stage. We hope that this historic

agreement, which lays the bases for reconciliation between

Israelis and Palestinians, will open the way to a lasting

solution to all the issues connected with the problem of the

Middle East and will lead ultimately to peace and calm in

that part of the world.

To that end, we call on the international community to

redouble its efforts to secure positive results for the attempts

now being made to settle the conflicts in Bosnia and

Herzegovina, Liberia, Angola, Somalia and all other

countries where peoples are being battered, divided and

plunged into misery by individual or tribal egoism and

ambition or are having their sovereignty threatened by the

inordinate greed of other States.

At the level of international economic relations, it is

depressing to note that, to this day, three quarters of

mankind live on the sidelines of economic and social

progress, in so far as numerous structural imbalances

continue to hamper the efforts of the countries of the South

to achieve self-development and international cooperation.

Indeed, despite the concerted efforts at integration, despite

the internal adjustments still undertaken at enormous

sacrifice, and despite the expressions of good will for

international partnership, foreign debt continues to grow, and

the gap between the economies of the North and those of the

South continues to widen.

The delegation of Rwanda is convinced that if the lot

of mankind is to be improved, the international community

must undertake measures that can promote the emergence of

a new, more balanced and more equitable world economic

order. In this regard, only a common political will on the

part of all the Members of this Organization can help to

correct the structural imbalances in the global economy and

to open the way to a new partnership in which

interdependence means, first and foremost, a shared destiny

for mankind, in which international cooperation is even more

synonymous with success that benefits all the partners - the

seal of fraternity and the promise of genuine solidarity.

Forty-eighth session - 6 October l993 3

Rwanda has always believed that international

cooperation, if it is to be more effective, must be based to an

even greater extent on intense, transparent, consistent and

concise action agreed with our partners and undertaken

within what must one day be regarded as a genuine contract

of solidarity. Rwanda has always believed that well-planned

cooperation implies the concept of co-management, of co-

responsibility. This means shared responsibility, ongoing

dialogue, transparency of commitments and acceptance of

the right of all sides to make mistakes, so that, to a greater

extent than in the past, cooperation can meet the stakes of

the future. To secure even more genuine cooperation, the

international community must seek effective solutions to all

these challenges that are leading us into institutionalized,

crushing debt.

In addition, the scope of international cooperation can

be widened, and its impact increased, only through genuine

integration of action and of programmes in the context of a

national strategy and with a global vision of authentic self-

development. Rwanda has always attached special

importance to international cooperation, to which it owes so

much of its progress, its development and its achievements.

With regard to the political situation in Rwanda, my

country, as Members know, is emerging from a pointless and

undeserved war, which was imposed on it three years ago,

on 1 October 1990. Allow me, before sketching out the

situation into which this war has plunged the population of

Rwanda and the country’s economy, to emphasize once

again the role of the international community in resolving

crises and conflicts, for the ending of the war in my country

is the result of a miracle of international solidarity.

There is no doubt that this required the good will of the

two parties to the conflict. Wisdom prevailed over ambition,

and hatred yielded to the nation’s need to survive. But the

will of the two parties to pool their efforts was strongly

supported by countries neighbouring Rwanda, among which

the two parties chose, by common agreement, the Republic

of Zaire as Mediator and the United Republic of Tanzania as

Facilitator.

The two warring parties benefited also from the skilled

help of President Abdou Diouf of Senegal, who was at that

time Chairman of the Organization of African Unity, and of

certain friendly countries - France, Belgium, the Federal

Republic of Germany and the United States of America. In

addition, they received most valuable assistance from the

Organization of African Unity and the United Nations. All

these countries and international organizations sent

representatives to Arusha, Tanzania, to take part in the peace

negotiations that had begun in Zaire following the launching

of hostilities, that had continued in Tanzania for a year, with

their participation, and that culminated in a peace agreement.

I take this opportunity to express once again to all these

countries and organizations the sincere gratitude of the

Government and people of Rwanda for their highly valuable

contribution to the positive outcome of the negotiations,

which were very trying to all who were involved and which

on numerous occasions would have been on the verge of

collapse had it not been for the tenacity and determination

of the two parties and the wise and firm advice of all friends

present.

This senseless war that befell Rwanda is now subsiding,

thanks to the peace agreement that was signed in Arusha on

4 August 1993. It was bloody and devastating. We mourn

tens of thousands of victims. The war resulted in

considerable destruction of infrastructure, equipment and

socio-economic and administrative systems, and it left in a

state of dire poverty more than 900,000 displaced persons,

whose property went up in smoke.

That war has left us with orphans and invalids of all

ages, widows, helpless old people and hundreds of thousands

of economic victims. In the regions affected by the war,

misery and desolation hold sway. Education has been

severely jeopardized and the psychological consequences for

the most vulnerable age groups are doubtless incalculable.

This war has destroyed the fragile equilibrium of the

country’s food supply and has exacerbated the famine which

has struck the entire country, because it broke out in the

country’s most fertile regions, which have not been

cultivated for three years now. The representatives of

international bodies and non-governmental organizations who

visited the camps of displaced persons cannot forget the

desolate sight of the make-shift shelters where hundreds of

thousands of human beings, crammed together in highly

unsanitary conditions, continue to lead lives that are close to

intolerable. Those representatives cannot forget the long

lines of hungry people on the roads, seeking the assistance

sent them by the international community, which with

difficulty was able to deliver it to them for their survival.

And what can we say of the economy in general?

Already badly shaken, it is today in even worse condition,

following the enormous expenditures resulting from the war

and the destruction it caused. Thus, after the signing of the

Arusha Peace Agreement, the time has come for the long-

term, enormous work of national reconstruction in the newly

regained peace and calm, without forgetting the other, no

4 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session

less important objective, the implementation of national

reconciliation and the continued strengthening of the process

of democratization in the management of the country. We

can already welcome the establishment of a multi-party

system by the constitutional review of 10 June 1991, thanks

to which 17 political parties were agreed upon. Five of

them are at present forming a transition Government which

soon will be expanded to the Rwanda Patriotic Front for a

new transitional period which should lead to pluralist, free

and democratic elections.

On the economic level, Rwanda has been experiencing

a crisis since the 1980s, which has had negative

repercussions on the implementation of the budget and has

been exacerbated not only by the war but also by the

unpredictable nature of external shocks, in particular the

collapse of the international price of coffee, our primary

export.

As it was no longer possible to control the growth of

public expenditures and of the fundamental imbalance in the

balance of trade, in combination with a production system

whose structure is very fragile, my country implemented, in

November 1990, a programme of recovery having the

following priorities: to relaunch the economy, to achieve

internal and external financial balance, to promote domestic

savings, to encourage the activity of the private sector and

to improve the management of the public sector.

Rwanda’s structural adjustment programme has been

given great technical and financial support by all the donors,

headed by the Bretton Woods institutions. Unfortunately,

the launching of this programme, which the Government

could apparently have carried out without too many sudden

detours, coincided with the attack of October 1990.

From this rostrum, I would like most solemnly to thank

the international community for the support it has accorded

Rwanda both with assistance in the balance of payments and

with development projects. We are even more grateful for

the priority the international community has given to

assistance for those displaced by the war, in answer to the

consolidated appeal made by the Department of

Humanitarian Affairs of the United Nations, whose

dedication is inestimable.

Following the war and the new deterioration of the

terms of trade which affected the economy of Rwanda, the

very backbone of our structural adjustment programme is

threatened. I am speaking here of the liberalization of

external and internal trade which requires a comfortable

currency reserve situation.

The Government of Rwanda has just decided upon the

primary features of its short- and medium-term post-war

economic policy from 1993 to 1996, items we have

submitted to the international community. This policy

reflects the Government’s commitment to do all in its power

to stabilize the large financial balances and to launch the

process of economic recovery on the basis of the

fundamental strategy of the structural adjustment programme,

which gives a key role to market forces. In short, the

positive results of the measures that have been in place since

November 1990 must be capitalized upon, and new measures

required by the deterioration of short- and medium-term

economic prospects, linked to the war, must be planned.

Therefore, in accordance with the contents of the Peace

Agreement, the priorities of the expanded transitional

Government are to pursue efforts at economic recovery and

to work on four programmes for specifically post-war

economic development: emergency assistance to those

displaced by the war in order to help them return to their

property, assistance in the reintegration of Rwandese

refugees, assistance in reconstruction and assistance in the

social and economic reintegration of demobilized military

personnel.

For the repatriation of Rwandese refugees in accordance

with the Dar-es-Salaam Declaration of 19 February 1991, a

donors’ meeting will be organized at the initiative of the

Government, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and

the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for

Refugees (UNHCR). With the war, we saw all types of

destruction, particularly the damaging and/or destruction of

several thousands of hectares of forest which will even

further aggravate the wood shortage. With the end of the

war, the country will have to dispose of the funds to

demobilize more than 31,000 military personnel. We will

also have to locate throughout the country paying jobs and

training which can facilitate their social and economic

reintegration.

Within the framework of the preparation for the

programmes of reconstruction and socio-economic

reintegration of demobilized military personnel, I have

personally sent a request to the Secretary-General of the

United Nations, on 2 January 1993, and an inter-agency

mission of the United Nations systems and of the United

Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is at present

backing the Government of Rwanda in the preparation of the

document to be submitted to the donors at a round table for

humanitarian emergency assistance.

Forty-eighth session - 6 October l993 5

Rwanda is trying to manage its meagre resources in an

extremely difficult context. But it remains committed to the

strategy of economic development contained in the structural

adjustment programme it launched in November 1990, with,

as its base, the process of economic liberalization that has

already begun and is giving the private sector a larger role

in decision-making.

By signing the Peace Agreement the Government of

Rwanda firmly committed itself to strengthening the basis of

a State of law in which public freedoms, together with

political rights, justice and equality, will be guaranteed. In

that Agreement the two parties have agreed that an

independent National Commission for Human Rights will be

established entrusted with dealing with violations of human

rights perpetrated by any person on Rwandan territory and,

in particular, by State bodies and by persons under cover of

the State or other organizations. Simultaneously, the

Government will move to improve the functioning of the

legal and penal systems, in particular by forbidding arbitrary

and illegal arrests and inhumane treatment of detainees and

by severely punishing the perpetrators of such acts.

Since the country’s human, material and financial

means are severely limited, an appeal will be made to

foreign financial and technological assistance, especially in

the area of the training of magistrates and officials of the

Office of the Public Prosecutor and Ministry of Justice

personnel.

In the Peace Agreement the Government of Rwanda has

also reaffirmed its determination to reach a final settlement

of the refugee problem, a goal to which it had committed

itself in the Dar-es-Salaam Declaration of 19 February 1991

at the regional summit meeting which examined the problem

of Rwandan refugees.

The task will be a difficult one for the broad-based

transitional government envisaged in the agreement within

the framework of the Protocols of Agreement on Power-

sharing between the country’s political parties and the

Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF). That Government will be

set up in the next few days, as soon as the prerequisite

conditions have been met. The task will also be a difficult

one for the people of Rwanda as a whole, who will be the

ultimate authors and beneficiaries of the hoped-for progress

and well-being.

Nevertheless, despite the will and determination of the

Rwandan people and their Government, we must

acknowledge the utter insufficiency of the domestic means

available, given the titanic labour to be accomplished. We

thus look to the international community to support and

supplement our own efforts.

The first contribution we expect from the international

community is the deployment, as rapidly as possible, of an

international neutral force, as provided in the Arusha

Agreement. On behalf of the people of Rwanda, I should

like to express to the United Nations as a whole, and to the

members of the Security Council in particular, our gratitude

for the historic decision the Organization took yesterday in

adopting the resolution establishing the United Nations

Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), so long awaited

for the implementation of the Arusha Peace Agreement.

The Agreement assigns to that force the task of

facilitating the implementation of the Peace Agreement,

specifically by supervising implementation of the Protocol on

the Integration of the Armed Forces of the Two Parties and

by providing various kinds of assistance to the authorities

and competent bodies. The Agreement also assigns to

UNAMIR security tasks, including, inter alia, monitoring the

overall security situation in the country and investigating and

reporting on activities carried out by the competent

authorities and bodies in the maintenance of public order;

assisting in ensuring the security of the civilian population;

assisting with mine-clearance operations; assisting in the

identification of arms stockpiles and the neutralization of

armed bands throughout the country, and monitoring the

respect by both sides of the comprehensive cease-fire and

cessation of hostilities, as provided in the Peace Agreement.

Lastly, the Arusha Peace Agreement entrusts the neutral

international force with the tasks of supervising the training

process of the national armed forces, and here I would

mention only the supervision of the disengagement of forces,

supervision of the demobilization of all the military forces

and the Gendarmerie, and participation in the training

programme for members of the New National Army and

National Gendarmerie.

This is some indication of how necessary and urgent

the establishment of the neutral international force is in order

to allow for the creation of the broad-based transitional

government and the reintegration of persons displaced by the

war, the repatriation of refugees and, in a

6 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session

general manner, national reconstruction in conditions of

maximum security.

Another extremely vital contribution we expect from the

international community, and more specifically from the

United Nations system and, on a bilateral level, from the

friendly countries and various non-governmental

organizations, will be that of financing the priority

programmes to which I referred a few moments ago.

Today, more than ever, Rwanda needs the attention,

concern and good will of the international community. It is

relying on that community’s generosity to re-establish itself

and to recover from the horrors of war. May that hope be

realized soon.

With the support of the international community the

people of Rwanda hope to pass smoothly through a transition

period that, notwithstanding the guidelines of the Peace

Agreement, could still turn out to be arduous. The people

of Rwanda, however, are relying on the patriotism and sense

of responsibility that their political authorities and the leaders

of the parties in the government and the Transitional

Assembly must demonstrate to consolidate the democratic

gains and lay down, once and for all, the foundations of

peace and national harmony. Once the demons of division

have been exorcised, the people of Rwanda will surely build

a new nation and experience once again uninterrupted

progress.

At this session of the General Assembly elections will

be held for a number of seats on the Security Council.

Rwanda has officially put forward its candidacy to become

a non-permanent member of that body entrusted with

responsibility for international peace and security. Its

candidacy was endorsed at the last Summit Meeting of the

Organization of African Unity (OAU) held at Cairo at the

end of June this year. As the Head of State, I ask for the

Assembly’s trust in my country, Rwanda, which has never

yet had a seat on the Security Council. As a State

concerned to carry out its responsibilities, including those on

the international level, Rwanda believes that it can, today

more than yesterday, make its modest contribution to the

maintenance of peace in the world and to the restoration of

peace in troubled regions and countries.

Emerging as it now is from a war that has tried it

sorely, Rwanda is better aware of the price of peace, the

peace it has now regained thanks in particular to the efforts

of the international community.

Those are the reasons that have motivated Rwanda to

put forward its candidacy for a non-permanent seat on the

Security Council: to assist other warring nations to return to

peace, but also to work, together with the other members of

the Council, for the strengthening of peace within its own

borders. Rwanda hopes that it will have your confidence.

An ancient country that was under United Nations

trusteeship throughout the period prior to its accession to

national independence, my country, Rwanda, which has just

emerged from the throes of an unmentionable war and now

yearns to rebuild, relying on the lessons of the past, has

every reason to feel that it has matured, and it assures you

of its unswerving determination to work for the advent of

peace in the world and understanding among nations. On its

behalf, I repeat to the United Nations, our Organization, our

sincerest wishes that it may succeed and flourish for the

happiness of all mankind.