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Rwanda Page |
Welcome to ElectionInfo.com's pages on Rwanda
Official Name: Republic of Rwanda
Capital: Kigali
Area: 26,340 square kilometres (10,170 square miles)
Major cities (Population): Kigali 219,000 (1990 estimate)
Population: 7,952,000 (1995 estimate)
Population growth rate: 2.6 per cent (1990-1995 average)
Type of government Republic; presidential system
NOTE: After genocide and civil war in April 1994, the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front, in July 1994, took power and formed a new government.
Independence: 1 July 1962 (from United Nations (UN) trusteeship under Belgian administration)
Constitution: 18 June 1991
Voting Rights: Universal adult
Government
The constitution approved in 1991 provides for a multi-party democracy with a limited presidential term and independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Since August 1994 the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a movement of Tutsi refugees and moderate Hutus, has kept the country under martial law. The 1991 constitution and all political activity have been suspended.
Before August 1994 the basic administrative unit of Rwanda was the commune, run by an elected council and presided over by a mayor chosen by the council. Some 145 communes were formed. Since the civil strife of 1994, local government has been superseded by martial law.
Until the disruptions of 1994, Rwanda’s judiciary system was based on Belgian and German codes and customary law. The main courts of Rwanda were the Constitutional Court, the Court of Cassation, courts of appeals, courts of the first instance, and provincial courts. A court of accounts was responsible for examining public accounts. However, Rwandan courts ceased functioning in April 1994, and the structure of the judiciary system may take years to rebuild.
Recent History
Kigali’s History
As political consciousness increased among Africans after World War II, the Hutu grew more vocal in protesting about the political and social inequalities in Rwanda. In 1959 the antagonism between Tutsi and Hutu erupted into violence; the next year the Tutsi king fled the country, and an exodus of some 200,000 Tutsi followed. A republic was established in January 1961. In elections held the following September, the Hutu-dominated Paripehutu party won a large majority of the seats in the National Assembly, and a 4 to 1 majority voted against the return of the king.
Belgium granted Rwanda independence on 1 July 1962. In 1963 some exiled Tutsi returned to Rwanda as a rebel army. Although unsuccessful, the takeover attempt prompted a large-scale massacre of the Tutsi by the Hutu, followed by periodic ethnic violence. At the same time, thousands of Hutu victimized in Burundi took refuge in Rwanda. In 1990 Belgium and several central African nations sent troops to Rwanda to oppose an uprising by the Tutsi-backed RPF. A new constitution authorizing the establishment of a multi-party democracy became law in 1991, and a prime minister was appointed to organize a transitional government in preparation for multi-party elections in 1995.
In April 1994, shortly after concluding peace negotiations with the RPF that called for United Nations (UN) peacekeeping forces to be stationed in Rwanda, President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundi’s President Cyprien Ntaryamira were killed in a plane crash near Kigali in suspicious circumstances. Habyarimana’s death provoked a wave of ethnic violence, prompting UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to accuse the Hutu-dominated Rwandan Army of genocide against the Tutsi.
At the height of the violence, the UN forces, lacking authorization to protect civilians, abandoned Kigali. Over the next few months, an estimated 500,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsi, were massacred. The RPF army pushed towards Kigali, and a civil war ensued. In June 1994 the French government sent 2,500 troops to Rwanda to establish a safe area in the southwestern part of the country, but attempts to mediate a ceasefire failed as the RPF mounted a successful final assault.
After capturing the capital of Kigali, RPF troops began to drive the Rwandan Army and Hutu civilians northwest, towards the Rwanda-Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) border. Retaliatory violence by Tutsi claimed several thousand lives, including that of the Roman Catholic archbishop of Kigali. By mid-July, an estimated 1.2 million Rwandans had fled from the advancing RPF army across the border and into Zaire, forming enormous refugee camps around the city of Goma.
By early August 1994, an estimated one-quarter of the pre-war population of Rwanda had either died or fled the country. International relief efforts were mobilized to care for the refugees, but available supplies were inadequate and outbreaks of disease were widespread. In the squalor of the camps, more than 20,000 refugees died in a cholera epidemic.
A ceasefire was declared in July 1994, and an RPF-backed government was established with Pasteur Bizimungu as president. The RPF made a point of including other groups in the government. In spite of international efforts, refugee camp conditions in Zaire and Tanzania have remained poor, owing to transport difficulties and the sheer number of refugees. Many Tutsi refugees have returned to Rwanda, including refugees who had fled in the 1960s, but the repatriation of Hutu refugees has been slower, as many fear reprisals.
During an attempt to close the Kibeho refugee camp in southwest Rwanda in April 1995, government forces opened fire on a surging crowd in the camp. The Rwandan government estimated the death toll at about 330 people, while the UN estimated that 2,000 people had been killed. Meanwhile, grossly overcrowded prison conditions in Rwanda have caused hundreds of deaths each month. A UN war crimes tribunal was scheduled to open in Arusha, Tanzania, sometime in 1995; however, the UN human-rights effort has been slowed by lack of funds. The RPF government began trials of those accused of crimes related to the massacres in April 1994.
After the war, Hutu refugees, mainly centred in Zaire, began forming armed movements to overthrow the RPF government. In June 1995 the UN Security Council voted to cut by more than half the number of UN troops in Rwanda, after the Rwandan government asked that the forces be removed.
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