The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

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REPORT ON RWANDA YOLANDE MUKAGASANA, KIGALI Presentation of Rwanda To better understand the genesis of the Rwandan conflict, we must first understand Rwanda and its people during the pre-colonial period, and follow the thread of events. Rwanda provides certain exceptions, compared with other African countries discovered by European explorers. Rwanda has been a state for several centuries. Despite its small size of 26,338 sq. km., Rwanda enjoys a temperate, mild and humid climate. The terrain is particularly mountainous, since the entire country is more than 1000 m above sea level, and half its total area is between 1500 and 2000 m above sea level. Nicknamed the “land of a thousand hills” for its beautiful lush greenery, the areas of moderate altitude are home to the majority of the population. Rwanda is a nation populated by three major human groups: the Twa, the Hutu and the Tutsi, which all constitute one and the same ethnic group, the Banyarwanda. According to legend, all Rwandans are originally brothers, because they have a common ancestor, Kanyarwanda. Per capita GNP was $230 in 2005. Rwanda is not the creation of the colonizers, nor did they give it its name. Rwanda has always called that, except that the colonizers decided to spell it Ruanda instead of Rwanda, because the “w” is pronounced differently in German and French. Otherwise, Rwanda never changed its name. The history of Rwanda can be divided into four periods: � The pre-colonial period � The colonial period, 1889-1962 � The independent period, from 1962 to 1994, and � The post-genocide period, from 1994 to date. Summary of the pre-colonial period The political system in Rwanda was always a monarchy, certainly since the thirteenth century, under the Nyiginya dynasty. Rwanda was one of the last African countries to be incorporated into the European colonial system in the late nineteenth century (1890). 153
The political administration of Rwanda was well structured. The monarchy was composed of the king, his advisors, and the chiefs and subchiefs. The king was at the top, below him were three chiefs, and below them, the sub-chiefs, scattered throughout the territory. The king was not sedentary, but travelled around the country continually. The royal capital was Nyanza, in what is now the Southern District. The courts were called the Gacaca (pronounced Gachacha), a kind of assize court based on confession, in which the entire population was called together. There was neither a counsel for the defence nor for the plaintiff. Everything was done by the people. On the other hand, for anything concerning a crime of blood, a royal court was responsible. Everyone had access to the king. No Rwandans had an identity card. The identity of Rwandans was their common language, Kinyarwanda, their common culture and their common traditions. All Rwandans prayed to the same God, Imana. In Rwanda, the groups Hutu, Tutsi and Twa never existed as ethnic groups. The ethnic groups were created by the imagination of the colonizers. Tutsi, Hutu and Twa were socio-economic classes. These groups existed before colonization, of course, but changed their meaning under colonial rule, and were then frozen. Before the invention of identity cards by the colonizers, it was common to move from one class to another by marriage or acquisition of wealth. The colonial period Certain dates which mark the history of conflict in Rwanda: 1884 -1885: The International “Congo Conference” in Berlin awards the regions of “Ruanda-Urundi” and Tanganyika to the German East Africa Company. The British explorer Henry Morton Stanley becomes the first white man to set foot on Rwandan soil, on an island in Lake Ihema in eastern Rwanda. He encounters fierce hostility from the inhabitants, and withdraws immediately. 1892: Oscar Baumann, a German doctor, crosses Rwanda from the east. Not daring to proceed into the interior, he continues toneighbouring Burundi. 154
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The Contribution of Women to Peace
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Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Brussels
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PROJECT REPORT THE CONTRIBUTION OF
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tribunes and now at the Internation
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NGOs, but also through their own au
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Two world views: Peacebuilding and
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posing certain populations, raciall
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In the second work step, key questi
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so that in times of crisis, people
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confidence of the people, who frequ
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morial culture was to be forged, na
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in Bosnia-Herzegovina so far that t
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war, as the precondition for the pr
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of the conflicts have proven to be
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We can draw many lessons from the w
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mali elite, which competed with the
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The third stage, which I call warlo
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Shukria Dini concludes her report w
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To date, the women’s initiatives
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the expulsion of the Tutsi from Rwa
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In 1961, the destruction of the Tut
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against British facilities. The res
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Palestine There are no secrets in t
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At the same time, Lama Hourani reco
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tention for children with special n
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of the Golan Heights, the West Bank
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nations and clashes between the Isr
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� “Collective trauma and the ep
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has been an opportunity to exchange
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In July 2005, at a strategic planni
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Israeli peace movement is a weak, c
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total of thirty resolutions of the
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Yugoslavia is to some extent an exc
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Women’s networks show the effecti
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much of history remains alive in th
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Expansionist Serbian nationalism de
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structured, and the monarch was giv
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The representative of the constitue
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small organization with only some 3
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goslav state presented itself as th
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ered and led to painful realization
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longer returned to the countryside.
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the old national tensions. In the s
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The Programme for the Long-Term Con
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No rational analysis which balanced
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erships made several suggestions du
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first free elections in June 1990.
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overwhelm the others. The Serbian l
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change. In the underground and duri
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The anti-bureaucratic revolution wa
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Page 113 and 114: At a few places in Croatia, several
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Page 121 and 122: Many came to südost. It was not po
Page 123 and 124: was told about war and horror were
Page 125 and 126: The on-going conflict in Somalia is
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Page 131 and 132: such as the liberation of Kuwait fr
Page 133 and 134: opportunity to emerge from the viol
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Page 137 and 138: The manner of holding such discussi
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Page 145 and 146: As in other conflict zones, women i
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Page 149 and 150: Somali women used all kinds of crea
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Page 155 and 156: epresenting him. The God of Rwandan
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Page 171 and 172: REPORT ON ISRAEL MOLLY MALEKAR, TEL
Page 173 and 174: The remarkable military victory of
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the Naqba, the majority of the Pale
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The lack of trust in the internatio
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One of the first collective popular
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Another form of the non-violent res
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estinian President Yasir Arafat’s
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Refugees remain most vulnerable und
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UNRWA also provides technical and v
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Challenges Electricity The siege ha
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services programmes to reduce pover
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proved school health services, comp
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micro-credit programme, which is ma
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job creation, food and cash distrib
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Job creation UNRWA alleviates the i
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een no previous record. And on July
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REPORT ON WOMEN’S PEACE INITIATIV
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Council Resolution 1325 that calls
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sist on the resumption of negotiati
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The third activity of the IWC has f
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Looking retroactively to all the ye
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standing any more. He wanted me to
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I always had intensive contacts to
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Cultural events form a framework in
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INTERVIEW WITH SHUKRIA DINI, NAIROB
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With my education and experience, I
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INTERVIEW WITH YOLANDE MUKAGASANA,
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witness, and that’s the only thin
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Certainly I see myself living on th
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Today, we have been thrown back fur
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A very hard experience with war was
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had to teach me the paragraph about
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sein invaded Kuwait, which made it
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inging in other men and even childr
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I got out of Gaza in 2007. I still
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I faced a great challenge to do wel
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In the mid-’70s, Yasser Arafat an
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ANNEX PROJECT CONCEPT Women’s Con
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KEY POINTS FOR REPORTING ON CONFLIC
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� What role did the work of women
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USPID, Unione Scienziati per il Dis
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Toda Institute, for Global Peace an
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Yolande Mukagasana is a widow and s
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Rosa-Luxemburg-Foundation Brussels
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The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

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