• by IPS Correspondents (paris)
• Thursday, November 24, 1994
• Inter Press Service

PARIS, Nov 24 (IPS) - Rwandan and foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have begun to tackle together the immense and urgent need to rebuild practically from scratch the country just emerging from war and to make a successful transition to peace.

"The passage from war to peace is mined. The victors in a battle often lose the war soon after, for people are seldom prepared for peace," said Pierre Calame, president of the Foundation for the Progress of Man (FPH), based here.

The task of rebuilding Rwanda, said Calame, is made more urgent amid the trickles of international assistance and persistent reports that the defeated former government soldiers and militias have been getting ready to reconquer the country.

Adding a sense of urgency is the massive but disorganised return of refugees who have fled past waves of killings and sought refuge in neighbouring countries.

The refugees are heading back home, it is said, only to find that things were not as they had expected and the land and property they had hoped to recover now belonged to someone else.

With the support of the Foundation and the newly installed government in Rwanda, some 250 local and foreign legal experts, magistrates, agronomists, government ministers, public employees, priests, soldiers and human rights activists held recently in the capital Kigali a one-week seminar on the reconstruction of Rwanda.

At the end of the week enriched by testimonies of people helping countries like Cambodia, Lebanon, El Salvador, Palestine and South Africa make the same treacherous passage to peace, the participants identified 11 major challenges and a global strategy.

Topping the list of challenges and recurrent subjects during the seminar were the questions of justice and impunity, the re- integration of refugees who fled the country in different waves, and the distribution of land.

Other tasks included the reconstruction of the administration and the society, the rehabilitation of media, the youth, the Church, indemnisation of victims of war and the caring of violated women and orphans -- and international aid.

In sum, the situation in Rwanda has been characterised by an enormous loss of human resources, the destruction of public service, the lack of financial means, the difficulty in integrating returnees and the presence of the army in certain branches of the administration.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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