Humanitarian Assistance in Rwanda: Hard Choices, No Ex Its
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Humanitarian Assistance in Rwanda: Hard Choices, No Ex its This evaluation assesses whether U.S. humanitarian assistance-primarily food aid-saved lives, provided a foundation for sustainable development, and prolonged or shortened conflict from 1996 through the spring of 1999. The evaluation team assessed the U.S. government's humanitarian assistance to Rwanda, drawing on the findings and conclusions of other donors and implementing partners. The team looked at U. S. assistance provided multilaterally through international organizations, such as the nTHigh Commission for Refhgees (UNHCR) and the World Food Program (WFP). It considered cross-border operations, including feeding Rwandese refhgees in camps in neighboring countries. The team found that food aid provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) definitely saved c;uuniless lives and reduced suffering in the refhgee camps along the borders and inside Rwanda. Absent comprehensive data, however, it is impossible to say how many lives were saved. USAIDIRwanda, with policy and program support from USAID/Washington, undertook a high-risk strategy with a variety of innovative programs that integrated relief and development programs and resources. The Mission's early transition activities aided in laying a foundation for successfhl nationwide local elections, a comprehensive government program for recovery, and effective programs of implementing partners. However, USAID'S food aid assistance to refhgee camps in the Democratic Republic of Congo (until 1997, known as Zaire) and Tanzania from 1994-1996 was a colossal---------.* policy called refugees used the camps as a staging ground for an insurgency in Northwest Rwanda in 1997, in an attempt to destabilize or overthrow the newly installed government. At the end of the day, food assistance prolonged that conflict, which brought ( more deaths and displacements. - The team found the hardest lesson of all is communicating evaluation conclusions and recommendations in a way that will prompt change in institutions' policies and decision- making procedures. For example, few people were familiar with the analysis and recommendations of the 1996 Joint Multidonor Evaluation of Rwanda (although there were a number of apparently unopened volumes in Washington and the field). USAlD staff had only a limited knowledge of the GHAI Transitions paper. A Legacy of Division and Conflict Rwanda has seen repeated mass killings since 1959, rooted in a polarization of ethnic groups since pre-colonial days. Under German colonial and Belgian trusteeship rule, the minority Tutsis became the privileged class; the Hutu majority the underprivileged. The Belgians and the Catholic Church then shifted their support to the majority Hutu, easing the way for a Hutu revolution in 1959-196 1.The country's refugee crisis began then, as tens of thousands of Tutsis fled to neighboring countries and the Tutsi-dominated monarchy was replaced by a Hutu-led independent republic. The Tutsi refugees became increasingly militant and formed the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF). As one high-level interviewee reminded us, the war for Rwanda began in 1990 when the RPF made its first incursion into Rwanda from its base in Uganda. Although unsuccessful, it set the stage for a second attempt in 1993. By mid- 1992, RPF attacks had displaced 200,000-300,000 people in the north. Another 900,000 were displaced after a February 1993 attack, although by yearend 60 percent had returned home. But following an attempted coup in October and ethnic violence in Burundi, 50,000 to 100,000 people were killed and 700,000 became refugees. Peace talks leading to the Arusha Accords excluded Hutu extremists from the transitional government and marginalized them in the political process. Although President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu major general who took power after a 1973 coup, signed the accords, he did not get the support he needed to implement them from the radical power brokers. The accords called for a new constitution allowing for multiparty democracy, separation of powers, and presidential term limits. A number of agreements, including those that provided the Tutsi in Rwanda and those in Uganda who planned to return access to land and political power, were not being implemented. Escalating Violence. Escalating conflict led up to genocide in 1994-a planned, deliberate effort to eliminate the Tutsi population. The genocide started when a plane carrying the Hutu presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down on April 6. From April through July that year, 500,000-800,000 Rwandese were killed (10 percent of the entire population and more than 25% of the population fled). Those fleeing across the border were primarily Hutus, but some Tutsis also fled seeking rehge from the killing. The genocide reactivated the RPFYsmilitary campaign. By July 1994, the RPF defeated the Rwandese Army (FAR, or Force Armee Rwandaise). From April through December of that year, the international community poured $1.4 billion in aid into the Great Lakes region, which covers Burundi, Rwanda, Northwest Tanzania, Uganda, and Eastern Zaire. A third went to Rwanda; two-thirds to asylum countries. The emphasis was on saving lives by providing food, shelter, medical, and sanitation services. The bulk of the money went to the refugees, not the survivors of the genocide. The perpetrators of the genocide, now living in refugee camps, made incursions into the country, assassinating government officials throughout 1995 and 1996. Contributing hrther to the situation was the forced closure of the refugee camps and mass return of people back into Rwanda in mid 1996. As a result of those incursions and mass movement instability increased in the Northwest, major segments of the population in the country's Northwest began leaving by mid-1997. Donors and most probably the government did not fully grasp the scope of that humanitarian emergency until February 1998. By then, more than a third of the people in the region were displaced and required substantial food aid. Some observers believe the war is not over yet. Others think its concluding phase began in early 1999, when the government took control of the Hutu-led insurgency in the Northwest and reestablished secure borders. Most Rwandese have now returned from exile or rehgee camps-for some, for the first time in generations. Genocide and the Regional Context In answering the three questions posed in the subject evaluation, it is important to understand the national and regional context in which both Rwandans and international relief and development agencies found themselves in early 1996. At the risk of being obvious, it is important to recall that there had been a renewal of war to end a specific instance of genocide carried out on a scale and intensity not seen since World War 11. As our team was reminded on numerous occasions, the extremely important events surrounding genocide have had -and continue to have- unrelenting influence on current events in and opinions about Rwanda. It is also important to recall that the RPF expected to be in a power sharing role -but not having to form a new government, after the genocide and a campaign to end genocide that included the exodus of at least 25% of the population and the death of 10%. The country was in a state of tension and instability as there were assassinations through 1995 and ' 96, particularly as a result of incursions by the genocidaires across the lake from Ijwe Island and other neighboring countries. The RPA military and the country knew that no truce had been declared or post genocide peace agreement signed. Some observers do not believe the war is over yet; the war of genocide continues. This is difficult for outsiders or, for that matter, almost anyone to understand. Rwanda's security is tied to events outside its borders. The recent rather htile bombings of Uvira and Goma in May 1999, the attack on Bwindi, allegations of training of Interhamwe and exFAR forces by Zimbabwe in DROC, and fighting with the alliance in Congo this year illustrate this point. Without some kind of international guarantees in the region, and with support from the international community, there will likely be continued incidents and pressures on Rwanda that will inhibit development and keep everyone's macro and micro planning tentative and tenuous. Programming in a fragile peace. A military deputy camp commander with the Rwandese Patriotic Front told the evaluation team, "Rwanda was now, for the first time a country. And for now.. .at peace with itself and its borders secured." For peace to continue, however, the commander said within a generation Rwanda must transform its society so that it is no longer ethnically based, and create an equitable, credible government. This will be a challenge in a country as fragile as Rwanda with a structural food deficit and poverty remaining extremely high -90% of the rural population and 70% overall below the poverty line according to the World Bank. A number of observers and actors in Rwanda commented that humanitarian and development organizations were resistant to integrate cause and effect of these events into their analysis in order to guide the development of their new and on-going programs and activities. This theme is one that re-occurs throughout the evaluation. It is one in which the USAID Mission has demonstrated its institutional capacity to develop and implement a strategy quite effectively in a post- conflict transition. Findings and Recommendations Saving Lives USAID~Washingtonand USAID/Rwanda placed an experienced Food for Peace (FFP) officer in Kigali in 1997 to manage initially the food and later on (early 1998) non-food programs as well. Undoubtedly, this on-the-ground management presence, the only bilateral food aid presence in the country, saved lives. The officer was responsible for analysis that provided early warning and allowed donors to target food delivery to desperately vulnerable populations during the 1997 insurgency in the Northwest.