Rwanda, 1997

Before delivering the message of the Government of

Rwanda to the General Assembly, allow me to follow the

Heads of State and fellow Ministers who have spoken from

this rostrum and express to the President our very sincere

congratulations on his outstanding election. We also pay a

well-deserved tribute to his eminent predecessor, who

displayed devotion, skill and readiness to serve during the

last session.

Our warmest and fraternal congratulations also go to

the Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan, for whom this

session of the General Assembly is his first in that office.

At the fiftieth anniversary session of the United

Nations we took the opportunity to express loudly and

clearly our views with regard to the essential reforms to be

carried out within the United Nations. We welcome the

proposals made by the Secretary-General, and we assure

him of our support and cooperation. We also made

proposals on Security Council reform. We will continue to

make our contribution and lend our support to the collective

efforts aimed at ensuring greater democracy in the Council.

The Government of Rwanda also wishes to take this

opportunity to express its great satisfaction at the

appointment of Mrs. Mary Robinson as United Nations

High Commissioner for Human Rights. We assure both her

and the Secretary-General of our assistance and

cooperation.

At this session the Government of Rwanda wishes to

make its modest contribution to our consideration of some

matters of concern both to Africa and to the entire

international community. These primarily relate to the

difficulties encountered in the process of bringing to life a

new Africa and problems related to the prevention,

management and resolution of conflicts in Africa. We shall

also offer some thoughts on how our peoples may enjoy a

relatively smooth passage into the next millennium. We will

conclude with an appeal for international solidarity for

Rwanda and the Rwandan people.

The hope of the peoples of Africa and the third

world is first of all for an understanding of their real

problems, and today that understanding must be a priority.

Much of the international community supports the new

political order in Africa and the new African leadership

and leaders who wish to create new realities for a new

Africa. We had the opportunity and pleasure, at the

special meeting of the Security Council on Africa held on

25 September under the presidency of the Secretary of

State of the United States, of hearing comments in

support of the new African leadership. We stand firmly

together. The others, those who do not trust in Africa and

the Africans, who attempt to hinder our continent’s efforts

to free itself from neocolonialism and dictatorships, who

are today trying to discredit and undermine our leaders at

any cost, they are the ones we will obviously be forced to

deal with when we come to them.

I should like now to speak of the problems of

conflict prevention and conflict resolution in Africa and

other third world countries. Again, we extend our

warmest thanks to the Security Council for having taken

the positive initiative of convening a ministerial-level

meeting on Africa on 25 September.

Our contribution, beyond general considerations and

some specific cases, will focus primarily on identifying

the underlying causes of conflicts in Africa, conflicts

which in turn create the economic and political recessions

of which we in our continent — and elsewhere in certain

third world countries as well — are aware on almost a

daily basis.

Africa and the third world in general are suffering

from various ills, principal among which are ignorance,

poverty, bad political leadership, coups d’état and foreign

intervention. Those are the ills that have eaten away at

Africa, continue to eat away at it and are the sources of

every conflict on our continent.

Ignorance, it is said, is the root of all evils. Poverty

is the cause of all misfortune. What United Nations

programme will combat ignorance and poverty in Africa

and the countries of the third world, and when will these

two terrible ills that ravage our continent be cured?

Bad political leadership in Africa has led many

countries to ruin and even led to the first genocide on the

African continent, which occurred in Rwanda from April

to July 1994. The United Nations was present with a

military force of 2,500 men, who packed up and left,

abandoning the Rwandan people to the mercy of the

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Interahamwe militiamen of the erstwhile single party and

armed forces of the day. The planning and carrying out of

the genocide was the ignoble act of a bad political

leadership that viewed the ignorance and poverty of the

peoples of Rwanda — and, consequently, of the peoples of

Africa and the third world — as a political asset to

consolidate and perpetuate its dictatorship in power or to

usurp power.

We hope that the United Nations will support the new

political order in Africa and its new leadership, and that it

will oppose any manoeuvre aimed at using United Nations

structures to nip in the bud the new political order that is

emerging on our continent.

The conflicts of which we are all aware in Africa

today are the bitter fruit of the famous so-called Africa of

the Generals that emerged in the mid-1960s. Those coups

d’état sapped Africa with all their attendant tragedies, of

which all here are only too keenly aware. What are our

strategies for fighting coups d’état in Africa today? What

are the strategies of the United Nations for eradicating this

scourge, whose effects are realized by its creators only

when they themselves fall victim to it?

All of the coups d’état in Africa since 1965, whose

rotten fruits we are harvesting today, were fomented by

certain Western capitals in their own interests and to the

detriment of the African people. Today, unfortunately,

foreign manipulation is continuing in Africa, creating a new

cycle of coups d’état in Africa.

We urge the United Nations resolutely to attack the

five scourges I have just named, which still infect Africa

and are the source of all the conflicts on our continent.

These problems exist and we are familiar with them. Let us

not make them taboo — let us talk about them within this

prestigious building; let us talk about them in the Security

Council. That, perhaps, would mark the beginning of

improved conflict prevention and resolution in Africa.

We cannot close this chapter on African conflicts

without referring specifically to some that worry us more

than others. I am referring in particular to the Central

African Republic, where we feel the United Nations should

be on its toes and assist a country in which the keepers of

the old order and their opportunistic acolytes are using

violence against an elected Government. I am also referring

to Congo (Brazzaville), where precisely the same scenario

as in the Central African Republic is being played out on

a scale far larger than in the latter country.

In our humble opinion, the United Nations should

also send a clear and unambiguous message to the

Comorians of the island of Anjouan that the Comoros is

a State Member of the United Nations and that its unity

and integrity are not negotiable. We ask the parties

concerned to work with the Organization of African Unity

(OAU) to find an appropriate solution to their problem.

Western Sahara strikes a strong note of hope in the

area of decolonization. We welcome and encourage the

due implementation of the agreements that have just been

signed between the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic

and the Kingdom of Morocco to promote the process of

self-determination and independence for the Saharan

people.

In Somalia, the Government of the Rwandese

Republic urges all the parties to the conflict to promote

dialogue under the aegis of the OAU and the

Intergovernmental Authority on Development.

Two years from the advent of the new millennium,

we all have the ultimate duty of leading our peoples to

the year 2000 without setback or fear of the unknown,

unlike the people of the year 997 as they approached the

eve of the second millennium.

The twentieth century, leading into the awaited third

millennium, has deeded to us the two most horrendous

genocides in the history of humanity: the genocide of the

Jews during the Second World War and the genocide of

the Rwandans in 1994. Will we cross the threshold of the

third millennium with the same racist graffiti covering the

walls of our cities and airport corridors? Will those with

uneasy consciences continue forever to play dumb with

regard to the Rwandan genocide, the very first in the

history of our continent? Will religious fundamentalism

thrive at the cost of human lives?

Extreme selfishness, despair, suicide, racism, crime,

terrorism, drugs, paedophilia, battered women, rape: Are

we going to bring all this luggage with us into the third

millennium? What are we doing now? What are our

strategies to eradicate all these evils? Resignation?

Fatalism? Will the third millennium hold anything to

shock us?

We all claim to govern on behalf of our respective

peoples. What actions are we undertaking today to ensure

that they advance calmly, smoothly, without panic or

anxiety into the year 2000? If we do nothing, how will

we explain it to them on the eve of 1 January 2000 or on

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the first day of the year 2000? Will we use the language of

cynicism, pain, realism, politics, diplomacy or ritual — in

just enough to get them off our backs and hustle them

along into the year 2000 as into a lifeboat?

What strategies do the United Nations and its

agencies, present throughout Africa and other countries of

the third world, have to help the Governments and peoples

that must confront the anxieties of passing from one

century to another, one millennium to another? In my

country, Rwanda, I see no sign of any such strategy, while

the country is gripped by the many traumas born from the

tearing, or rather the shredding, of the social fabric by the

genocide of 1994. When the traumas of genocide are

complemented by millennial anxieties, what is to become

of such a people if it is not helped by increased

international solidarity?

I have seen no or almost no sign of such solidarity in

all my travels, no hint of such a project. Apparently, no one

is concerned. And yet, we are only 26 months from 1

January 2000. Why such indifference from countries and

from the United Nations? Should not our concerns be those

of the peoples on whose behalf we govern? We should be

one step ahead and thereby allay them.

Before closing, I wish to appeal to the General

Assembly that the United Nations adopt a mini-Marshall

Plan for the moral and physical rehabilitation and

reconstruction of the first African country to have fallen

victim to the catastrophe of genocide: Rwanda. This mini-

Marshall Plan for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of

post-genocide Rwanda was drafted by Ambassador

Sahnoun, Special Representative for the Great Lakes region

of the Secretaries-General of the United Nations and the

OAU, at the request of the Rwandan Government of

National Unity.

We also make a ringing appeal to the United Nations

and the entire international community to provide Rwanda

with substantial assistance, as it has received since

November 1996 more than 1.4 million repatriated

persons — one fifth of its population — who had fled to

the former Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the

Congo, Tanzania and Burundi. Following this mass return

of refugees, famine has today struck heavily in over four of

our provinces. For the victims of this famine, we request

emergency food relief and development assistance for every

sector of national life — agriculture, health, education, the

social and socio-economic reintegration of the repatriated,

the survivors of genocide, justice and the rehabilitation and

reconstruction of basic infrastructures, including those for

water, electricity and roads.

As for the social and socio-economic reintegration of

the repatriated, since November 1996 the Rwandan

Government has been sending into the field teams led by

two Ministers for each province and composed of other

ministers, members of Parliament and high-level

administrators. These field missions aim at supporting the

local administrative authorities in their tasks of receiving

and reintegrating the repatriates. The exercise has gone

well and is still being successfully pursued.

At the communal and municipal level, we have also

created reception committees composed of local

authorities and members of the United Nations

Commission on Human Rights.

Unfortunately, some troublemakers have filtered in

with the 1.4 million refugees who have recently returned

to Rwanda. Since February 1997, these fugitives have

been committing murders among the civilian population.

They have primarily targeted the survivors of genocide,

in order to do away with anyone who might be a witness

in a court of law, and local authorities who are devoted

to the cause of national unity and reconciliation.

The Rwandan Government has taken the necessary

measures to ensure the safety of the people in the north

of the country, which has been the site of these murders.

Again, results in this area have also been quite

satisfactory.

In fact, a month ago I organized a meeting of the

entire diplomatic and consular community at Ruhengeri,

one of the provinces in the north of the country. After

that meeting the diplomats had the opportunity to visit

any areas of Ruhengeri they chose.

Likewise, before I came to New York for the

General Assembly, Mr. Pasteur Bizimungu, President of

the Republic of Rwanda, headed a meeting of ministers

at Gisenyi, one of the country’s three northern provinces.

After the meeting the President of the Republic and the

members of the Government went into the field for three

days. They visited and spoke with people from all sectors

of the population, including peasants on communes and

in municipalities and students and State officials who had

been repatriated and who were participating in orientation

seminars on the positive aspects of national unity,

tolerance, reconciliation, respect for human life and

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solidarity. They also spoke with local authorities who are

working to train our people.

The Government of Rwanda needs support for this

exercise. It needs the assistance of the international

community.

Before concluding, we would like to say from this

lofty rostrum that we welcome the progress made towards

resolving the misunderstanding on the question of the

International Commission of Inquiry sent to the

Democratic Republic of the Congo, as the Minister for

Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

announced at his press conference yesterday afternoon.

The Rwandan Government therefore encourages

those specifically involved in this matter — namely, the

Secretary-General of the United Nations, the United

Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the

Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo —

to work together to put an end to this problem. They have

our confidence and support.

In order to support the efforts of the Secretary-

General, the High Commissioner for Refugees and the

Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo,

and to enlighten better the international community about

the refugee problem in eastern Zaire, the Rwandan

Government calls on the United Nations to publish and

circulate as a document of the Security Council the report

of the International Commission of Inquiry on the

trafficking in and distribution of weapons in refugee

camps in eastern Zaire.

The United Nations International Commission of

Inquiry was established under Security Council resolution

1013 (1995) of 7 September 1995. The Commission

submitted its report, duly signed by its members, one year

later, on 28 October 1996. The embargo on this report,

which has hindered its publication, should be lifted

immediately in order to facilitate everyone’s efforts.