This chapter summarizes Study IV, which examines the effectiveness, impact and relevance of international assistance to Rwanda on repatriation and on rehabilitation, reconstruction and long-term development of the country. The primary aim of the study was to draw lessons from the experience of the international community in order to formulate specific recommendations for Rwanda and for future complex emergencies. Two considerations are of particular relevance to this study. First, its focus, as with the other studies, has been on the activities of the international community. Second, it focuses, as do all ex-post evaluations, on the completed or continuing activities. It is not meant to be a needs assessment, therefore the areas in which the international community was not involved are not focused upon. The study is based on interviews with relief and development agencies in the US and Europe, and on field visits to Rwanda and neighbouring countries. During field visits in late April to early May, a team of 10 relief, refugee and development experts met with agency representatives, government officials and a cross-section of Rwandese. The report is a synthesis of the sectoral and topical reports prepared during the field visit.
Overview of assistance to Rwanda
Aiding the people of a war-torn nation rehabilitate and reconstruct their society is a politically delicate process that requires substantial financial commitment and programmatic coherence from the international community. It requires a multi-faceted, coordinated effort to rebuild not only economic but also, and perhaps more importantly, social and political institutions devastated by war and violence, tasks for which the international community is ill-prepared. In the case of Rwanda, the challenge has been especially daunting because of the genocide, which resulted in the deaths of five to eight hundred thousand people and the subsequent exodus of two million. As a whole, the international community has made a considerable effort, with varying degrees of success, to meet the unprecedented challenge of helping post-genocide Rwanda rebuild.
From April 1994, to the end of the year, the international community focused largely on saving lives by providing food, shelter and medical and sanitary services to refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). The vast majority of the assistance was expended to support refugee populations in Zaire, Tanzania and Burundi.
Attention within Rwanda began to shift from emergency relief towards rehabilitation and reconstruction in August-September 1994, when the international community began to realize the severity of human and institutional devastation brought about by the civil war and genocide. Even before that, relief agencies had embarked on more limited programmes of rehabilitation. A significant early initiative in July was the establishment by UNDP and the Rwandese government of the "UNDP Trust Fund for Rwanda," intended to be a streamlined mechanism for channeling donor funds for the rehabilitation of governmental capacity. This was followed at the beginning of August by the launching by UNDP of the first comprehensive programming mission for rehabilitation and reconstruction and at the end of the month by a World Bank Emergency Grant of US$20 million that _funded rehabilitation activities undertaken by FAO, UNHCR, UNICEF and WHO.
Since September 1994, the UN and donor agencies have supported a wide array of projects and programmes in different sectors and regions throughout the country.
Additionally, many of the 102 international NGOs present in the country in December 1995 moved into the rehabilitation phase through their initial participation in emergency humanitarian assistance. Much of the initial "first phase" rehabilitation was funded through the January 1995 UN Consolidated Appeals Process. However, the primary framework for the transition from emergency to rehabilitation and recovery assistance has been the January 1995 Round Table Conference for Rwanda Reconstruction, sponsored by UNDP and the Rwandese government, which provided funds for reconstruction and a mechanism by which disbursement of those funds could be tracked.
Disbursement of financial assistance to the new Rwandese government faced a range of problems - absorptive capacity, questions of legitimacy and accountability, to name a few, and consequently has been slow. In light of the potential social, political and economic costs of delays, financial support for national recovery has been surprisingly slow. This is especially so of funds pledged at the Round Table Conference. Of US$707.3 million pledged, only US$68.1 million had been disbursed mid-way through the year, which amounted to less than 10 percent of the pledged amount. Only about one-third of the funds disbursed was left for direct assistance to the government for balance of payments support, purchase of vehicles and equipment, technical assistance and so on. This remaining amount, US$22.8 million, represents three percent of the total pledged amount. The delay in disbursement of pledged funds has been caused by many factors; however, it undermined the government's overall capacity to pursue timely initiatives for economic recovery and political stability. According to UNDP, by September 1995, nine months from the initial pledging conference, about one-third (US$244.3 million) of the initial funds pledged had been disbursed. Partly as a result of persistent lobbying efforts by UNDP, the level of pledges at year's end had risen to slightly over US$1 billion and roughly half the funds initially pledged had been disbursed. If Rwanda's requirements were entirely for traditional project activities, this would be considered a good record, but in view of the need for flexible, fast-disbursing assistance, disbursements have been slow to materialize. On the other hand, to provide such assistance - essentially budget support - many donors need more assurance than they have been given about the transparency and accountability of budget preparation and execution by the government.
Of the more than US$2 billion estimated to have been spent on the Rwanda crisis since April 1994, the vastly larger share has gone to the maintenance of refugees in asylum countries. Independent analysis of UN/DHA financial tracking figures and financial information from key individual donors broadly confirms this point. Although such a disproportionate allocation is understandable - refugees must be supported - it appears to Rwandese who have lived through the horror of genocide that the international community is more concerned about the refugees than the survivors.
Support for economic and public sector management
The war destroyed the macro-economic and institutional infrastructure necessary for successful and balanced growth of a modern market-based economy. In spite of this and the numerous difficulties involved in regaining control of the economy and the public sector, the present government appears committed to continuing and accelerating reforms begun under the structural adjustment programmes of the previous regime. In consultation primarily with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the government has taken a series of measures - de-monetization and reduction in money supply, devaluation and reliance on market determination of exchange rates - that confirm its seriousness about economic reform. It adheres to the principle of keeping the public wage bill to no more than 50 percent of its pre-war level, but is finding that exceedingly hard to do for a variety of reasons. It is not clear if the government will be able to exercise the monetary and fiscal control necessary for economic stability in the future. Special conditions - a large volume of foreign currency in the economy, and a low stake in the value of the Rwanda franc, for example - early in the process of reconstruction facilitated monetary reforms.
Maintaining macro-economic policy in favour of growth and development, and keeping public recurrent expenditure under control are important challenges for the government as well as for the international financial institutions. The World Bank has reopened its local mission and initiated an Emergency Recovery Programme. The IMF has sent consultative missions to Rwanda. Other donors have provided a number of experts to key branches of the government, provided salary supplements and helped furnish offices so the economic and public management apparatus of the government can begin to function again. In spite of the relatively good start in economic management, there have been frustrating delays in the rate of disbursement of the World Bank Emergency Recovery Credit, a major component of the Emergency Recovery Programme. The December 1995 resignation of Rwanda's Central Bank governor, and his request for political asylum, signal turmoil within the macro-economic management apparatus.
Assistance to agriculture
The war had a devastating effect on agriculture and the rural economy. In response, the international community undertook a variety of agriculture rehabilitation programmes, most notable of which were the provision of seeds and tools to farm households, the multiplication of local varieties of major crops, and assistance to the Ministry of Agriculture. In particular, over two seasons each household received a "package" of bean, sorghum, maize and vegetable seeds and one or two hoes. Fifty percent of farmers were reached in the first season of seeds and tools distributions, while 80 percent were aided in the second season. Subsequent analyses estimate that 62 percent of farmers received seeds and 72 percent received tools. In conjunction with the distribution of seeds and tools for the resumption of agricultural production, relief agencies, guided by the World Food Programme, provided food aid for "seeds protection". This activity was guided by the logic that provision of food aid would reduce consumption of more expensive selected seeds.
General distribution of seeds and tools, as well as food aid through the first two seasons, is feared by some Rwandese relief personnel to have begun to induce dependency on the part of some recipients. Continued general distribution into the third season will certainly exacerbate this dependency. If the WFP follows through on its announced plan, based on a recent WFP/FAO survey, to target more closely on the vulnerable and needy, the potential for encouraging dependency should be mitigated. However, the criteria by which some aid is to be targeted by some NGOs appear so inclusive as to be of little use for targeting. Many farmers who have received material assistance for agriculture are squatters on land vacated by persons killed or having fled during the war. An unanticipated effect of seeds and tools distribution may be to entrench and appear to validate their hold on the land. This may be an unavoidable part of agricultural rehabilitation in Rwanda, but its potential negative ramifications must be understood. Equitable resolution of property rights and land tenure issues is of paramount importance to peaceful return of refugees and the achievement of peace in the countryside.
Although seed multiplication has focused primarily on volume and local adaptation, much remains to be done to re-establish seed development, focusing ultimately on pest and disease resistance. There has been little progress rehabilitating livestock herds throughout the country. At the same time there is a serious problem of over-stocking in the north-east. Another area of relative neglect is the export sector, specifically coffee. Projects have been identified and funds committed for the export sector, and, toward the end of 1995, activities began. But earlier rehabilitation of localized processing centres and assistance in coffee harvesting and marketing could have rapidly injected funds into the rural community. The international community has played a very small role in the rehabilitation of rural enterprises, especially small and medium enterprises.
Rehabilitating the health sector
By mid-July 1994, Rwanda's entire health delivery system had collapsed and was in complete disarray. Over 80 percent of its health professionals were killed or had fled the country. NGOs, UN agencies, the ICRC and bilateral donors arrived with trained health professionals, medicines, supplies and equipment. They re-established basic curative services in urban and rural areas and helped repair and restore damaged water systems. Non-governmental organizations were instrumental in delivering primary health services to the population. Yet because many NGOs lacked previous experience in the region, did not conduct proper needs assessments, and were poorly coordinated, there was much duplication of effort and waste of scarce medical resources. Donors have provided limited direct assistance to the government for strengthening its management, coordination and information systems capacity in the health sector. One exception is WHO, which has provided direct technical assistance to the Ministry of Health in health policy formulation, guidelines and health sector reform. Early in the process of rehabilitation, UNICEF prepared a report proposing a range of programming actions, subsequently undertaken during the year. The Ministry, with assistance from WHO and UNICEF, has reconstituted the country's vaccine stocks, immunization equipment and system for immunization. The re-establishment of a safe blood supply has been made a priority, and the National AIDS Prevention Programme is again receiving some direct support from donors. Implementation of STD/AIDS interventions, however, has been unacceptably slow given the potential magnitude of the HIV-infection problem in Rwanda. Water and sanitation systems are being rebuilt with the assistance of donors and NGOs, with most progress in Kigali.
The impact of international assistance for rehabilitation of the health sector has been positive, on balance. Health delivery systems have largely been brought back to pre-war levels, but weak initial needs assessments and programme strategy development and ineffectual programme monitoring and evaluation on the part of some agencies have hampered interventions in the health sector. The inability or unwillingness of some NGOs formally to engage the Ministry of Health in the project assessment, design and approval process further diminished successes in the health sector, and has contributed to a perception on the part of government officials that emergencies are perpetuated so as to allow relief agencies to "stay in business." Lack of coordination between NGOs and the government remains an impediment to effective rehabilitation.
Rehabilitating the education sector
International assistance for rehabilitation and reconstruction of education, initially focused on the primary level, has played a limited but valuable role, emphasizing emergency supplies of materials, rehabilitation of structures and food aid salary supplements to teachers. The UNICEF/UNESCO Teacher Emergency Programme, "school-in-a-box," co-designed by UNHCR, was provided to most of the primary schools that opened in September 1994. WFP, through its programme of food aid salary supplements to teachers, helped keep teachers on the job in the absence of funds with which to pay their salaries. In spite of these interventions, international assistance in education has been largely characterized by ad hoc emergency interventions with limited sustained impact. The international community's weakness in support for the rehabilitation and restoration of education is due in part to the programming limitations of emergency funds. Education activities are, for the most part, excluded from eligibility for these funds because they are not deemed life-saving. Later in the year, funding became available through the Round Table process. Of US$18 million requested in January 1995 by the Rwandese government for rehabilitation of the education system, US$4.1 million had been disbursed (as per Round Table tracking) by year's end. By then, pledged assistance to formal education programmes had grown to US$50.4 million. The World Bank Education Project, which became operational in Spring 1995, had by fall supported the training of 3,000 teachers, rehabilitation of 1,000 schools and provision of 120,000 textbooks.
Assistance to vulnerable populations
Genocide and war altered the country's demographic composition so radically that women and girls now represent between 60-70 percent of the population. By some estimates, between one-third and one-half of all women in the most hard-hit areas are widows. Further, several thousand women were brutally raped. During the initial stages of emergency assistance, women as a group were not given special treatment. Rather, it was assumed that they, like other beneficiaries, would benefit from the assistance provided to various sectors. The exceptions were WFP and CARITAS/Catholic Relief Services food support programmes specifically targeted toward vulnerable groups, including female heads of households.
Under existing Rwandese law, property passes through male members of the household. As a result, widows and orphaned daughters risk losing their property to male relatives of the deceased husband or father. Consequently, there is an urgent need to change judicial guidelines and legal interpretations of laws pertaining to property, land and women's rights. Save the Children (UK and US) and UNICEF are supporting the Ministries of Family and Rehabilitation and women's groups in their advocacy efforts in this area, as well as funding technical assistance to the judiciary. Numerous Rwandese NGOs are disseminating information and creating awareness of this problem. However, one year after the genocide, there were no comprehensive national programmes of family support for the survivors. Over time, however, those NGOs working in the community began to recognize the distinctive needs of women - widows, victims of violence and rape, and heads of households - and developed ad hoc initiatives to support communities in caring for the most vulnerable.
Estimates of the number of unaccompanied children in the region vary between 95,000 and 150,000 although there is substantial debate on the numbers. Some relief agencies believe the number well exceeds the higher figure, while other organizations consider it vastly exaggerated. There is a wide array of international and national NGOs implementing mostly ad hoc programmes for unaccompanied children. Only the larger and more experienced have developed longer-term comprehensive national programmes that support institutional capacity building and have established strong working relationships with the government. The key areas of intervention are in registration, tracing and reunification; the provision of foster care; and capacity building. By the end of 1995, over 10,000 children in Rwanda and the camps had been reunited with their families. This resulted from cooperation between ICRC, which established a data bank with the names of 85,000 children, sharing the information with other agencies, including Save the Children (UK and US), UNICEF and UNHCR, which with ICRC played major roles in tracing and reunification.
Some NGOs rushed into the country staking claim to, or opening up new unaccompanied children centres and orphanages without any long-term planning and without the guidance and direction of a strong coordinating body. There was also a lack of collaboration with or support of national organizations, which was particularly inexcusable after the situation had stabilized. Creation of centres for unaccompanied children was a necessary, short-term response that was not intended to be a long-term solution. Unfortunately, the establishment of centres has provided a livelihood to too many people to be discontinued easily. The only way current interventions can be sustained is if donors are willing to make long-term commitments financially to support child care institutions.
Psycho-social healing
The brutal nature and extent of the slaughter, along with the ensuing mass migration, swiftly and profoundly destroyed Rwanda's social foundation. Vast segments of the population were uprooted, thousands of families lost at least one adult and tens of thousands of children were separated from their parents. Because neighbours, teachers, doctors and religious leaders took part in the carnage, essential trust in social institutions has been destroyed, replaced by pervasive fear, hostility and insecurity. The social upheaval has affected interpersonal and community interaction across ethnic, economic, generational and political lines. Some groups, unaccompanied children, for instance, are relatively visible as "victims of violence," whereas the victimization of others, such as women and individuals who were forced to kill, is less apparent.
Relatively little attention has been paid to the problem of psycho-social healing. Donor efforts have concentrated primarily on trauma counseling for children. In addition, some organizations, mostly those religious in nature, have attempted to confront the ethnic animosity directly through reconciliation workshops and community healing initiatives, and indirectly within the context of their other programmes. What few programmes there have been for psycho-social healing have tended to overlook the needs of women. Also, the international community may be misapplying its experience with post-traumatic stress disorder. Missed opportunities in exploring indigenous concepts of mental health and methods of healing conceivably stem from initial lack of understanding of Rwandese society, psyche and culture, and the absence of adequate language skills, so vital to confidential communication.
Promoting human rights and building a fair judicial system
The international community has supported human rights initiatives in three key areas so as to promote the process of national rebuilding: establishment of the International Tribunal for Rwanda, reconstruction of the justice system and assistance to the UN human rights field operation. The impetus for these initiatives was the findings of the UN Special Rapporteur and a Commission of Experts, asked by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate alleged human rights violations during the war. By May 1995, six months from the establishment of the Tribunal, it had made only limited progress. From the outset, it had been facing problems of logistics, funding and staffing, which caused long delays. With staffing changes in October 1995, the pace of investigations stepped up. Thirteen months from its establishment, the Tribunal in January 1996 issued its first indictments of suspected war criminals, eight alleged leaders of the genocide. Despite recent progress, delays in establishing the Tribunal and making it operational have postponed reconciliation, which can hardly be expected to occur in the absence of justice. Further delays will reinforce the perception that the world is indifferent to the Rwandese genocide.
The justice system of Rwanda was manipulated by the former regime despite constitutional provisions ensuring its independence. Human rights abuses relating to arrests, detention, trial without counsel and widespread corruption were frequent in the past. If Rwanda is to establish a legal system that helps to ensure the rights of all citizens, it must construct a justice system that substantially improves on that which previously existed in the country. Several assistance initiatives are under way. These programmes, however, do not approach the level of assistance that was broadly recognized as being required to "restart" the justice system. The real challenge is not so much that of marshalling sufficient human and technical resources as of institutionalizing a new political culture in which differences are settled through discussion and accommodation and not through violence and bloodshed. The paralysis of judicial process and the inability to try suspected criminals is not solely due to lack of staff and equipment, which could be alleviated with outside assistance. There also appears to be a lack of political will to proceed. Even though conditions have improved with assistance from ICRC, the Netherlands and UNDP, they remain very harsh for many of the roughly 60,000 detainees in Rwandese prisons and jails. Also of high priority are improved security in the countryside and acceleration of progress in resolving property disputes involving pre-1994 (old-caseload) refugees.
The human rights field operation for Rwanda was the first field operation to be undertaken under the auspices of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and to be administratively supported by the UN Center for Human Rights in Geneva. The Commissioner for Human Rights and the government of Rwanda agreed to the deployment of 147 human rights field officers, one for each of the country's communes, although subsequently the 114 field officers were not deployed by commune. The objectives of the field operation were to investigate the genocide, monitor the human rights situation, help re-establish confidence, and provide technical assistance in the administration of justice. The human rights operation in Rwanda is perceived among experts and informed people to have failed to accomplish its stated mission. Its impact on the prevention of human rights violations and promotion of human rights has been minimal. However, it should be recognized that several factors, many of which were beyond the control of the human rights field operation, contributed to its poor performance to date. Informants identified the following set of factors: a broad and ambiguous mandate, inferior recruitment procedures, poor preparations prior to deployment, limited logistics and resource support, ineffectual leadership, absence of a coherent strategy, poor coordination between headquarters and field staff, bureaucratic infighting within the UN system, apathy, if not hostility, of the Rwandese government, and a highly politically-charged environment. Obviously, the entire blame for the failure cannot be laid on the leadership of HRFOR and the Centre for Human Rights. In October 1995, a new chief assumed leadership of the field operation in Rwanda. Initial reports indicate that he is re-examining and re-evaluating the entire operation to make it more relevant and effective. It is too early to tell the outcome of his efforts.
Return of refugees and internally displaced persons
After the victory of Rwandese Patriotic Front forces in July 1994, the old caseload refugees, primarily Tutsi who had left Rwanda beginning in 1959, began returning in large numbers. The government has estimated a total of over 700,000 to have returned. Old caseload returnees have benefitted from international assistance through direct aid to families, rehabilitation of commune structures and services, and assistance to government ministries, particularly the Ministry of Rehabilitation. However, the slow process of disbursing funds pledged for repatriation and reintegration at the Round Table Conference constrains the capacity of the government to facilitate the process.
Further, despite the efforts of the international community, very little has been accomplished in the repatriation of two million new caseload refugees who fled to Zaire, Tanzania and Burundi largely between April and July 1994. Most of these refugees were intimidated or terrified into flight through a premeditated, orchestrated attempt on the part of hard-line elements of the fleeing government to maintain leverage and a claim to legitimacy. The many accounts, both actual and false, of violent reprisals, arbitrary arrests and detentions of Hutu in Rwanda have also significantly discouraged repatriation. Only a small number of refugees, not more than 200,000 in 1994 and 100,000 in 1995, according to UNHCR, have returned thus far. While the pace of repatriation can be accelerated by implementing the recommendations outlined (in the section that follows), and the recent arrests of former extremist leaders in Zaire may have some effect, the international community should prepare itself for the eventuality that a substantial portion of the refugee population is still unlikely to repatriate soon for three reasons. First, between 10 to 15 percent of the refugees in the camps (adult and adolescent) are alleged to have participated directly in mass killing. These refugees and their families would be understandably reluctant to return. Second, the transmigration of people has been common in the Great Lakes region in the past. Many Kinyarwanda-speaking Òethnic Rwandese" live in Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Zaire. Consequently, refugees are not in totally foreign milieus; there are bonds of history and language that help mitigate refugees' nostalgia. Finally, the experience of past complex emergencies shows that it usually takes years, even decades, before significant voluntary repatriation takes place. Even then, rather than going back to their country of origin, many refugees settle in host (or third) countries. It is, therefore, imperative that the international community demonstrate more realism in planning its initiatives for the refugees than it has done so far by considering a wider range of solutions to the crisis.
Lastly, the record of the international community in facilitating the return of internally displaced persons has been mixed. The camps posed a potentially explosive threat to national security and essentially prolonged the transition from emergency to rehabilitation and reconstruction. The government maintained that massive repatriation of refugees would not be feasible until the IDP camps had been disbanded. The international community agreed to the need for closures, but was unprepared for the aggressive tactics employed by the government. The tragic events at the Kibeho camp, in which thousands of displaced persons were killed, epitomized the gulf between government exigencies and relief agencies' moral stance and mandates, and the tragic consequences of the lack of real communication. The Kibeho incident, about which facts are scanty, weakened an already tenuous relationship between government and relief and development agencies, making the coordination and cooperation necessary for large-scale rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts that much more difficult.
The consequences of genocide
Post-genocide Rwanda is dramatically different from pre-genocide Rwanda. The genocide has transformed the social, political and economic landscape of Rwanda. It has also profoundly affected the existing political and cultural institutions. But, above all, it has undermined the social trust that binds people together. Just as the Holocaust redefined the Jewish identity, so has the Rwandese genocide left a profound impact on the psyches of both Tutsi and Hutu.
The International community took steps to investigate the genocide and punish the culprits by establishing an International Tribunal; however, it has largely failed to incorporate the implications of genocide in the design and implementation of assistance programmes in Rwanda. It has treated and continues to treat the present crisis like other civil wars in which the international community intervened and assisted the suffering population. Such an approach has distorted assistance priorities, undermined the effectiveness of assistance programmes and alienated the present government. For example, the international community has tended to overlook the plight of the survivors of the genocide; by and large, they have not been treated any differently from other segments of the population. On the other hand, the international community has spent immense resources on the refugees. It is not that the refugees do not deserve assistance but that such assistance should be balanced with assistance to survivors.
The international community's apparent lack of understanding of the psychological impact of genocide has also contributed to the distrust - and even the open hostility - of the Rwandese government towards the UN human rights field operation. Its legitimacy has been vastly compromised because it is perceived as one-sided, focusing on current human rights violations instead of on crimes against humanity. Overall, limited mandates of the bilateral and multilateral agencies, the established modalities for allocating resources, and the procedures for delivering aid in the field are institutional factors that have led to the inability of the international community to respond adequately to the unique consequences of genocide. However, beyond institutional roadblocks, the cultural insensitivity of the international community at times devalued the tragic social and human dimensions of the genocide as perceived by the Rwandese. Perhaps the most lamentable example was the rush to promote reconciliation over the understandable resistance of those who had suffered immensely.
Long-term development of Rwanda
In examining the question of long-term development of Rwanda, two considerations should be kept in mind. First, the success of Rwanda's march towards a politically stable and economically sustainable society will depend upon a complex set of conditions and circumstances. For example, Rwanda will be shaped by its distinctive social, cultural and economic institutions, emerging regional alignments and interests, and the vision shown by its leadership. The international donor community can influence such factors, but cannot control them. Second, the transition process is not likely to be a smooth one. Rather, as has been the case with many complex emergencies, the process is most likely to be characterized by periods of ups and downs, stagnation, and even regression. There is a need to take a long-term perspective.
A broad consensus seems to be emerging that the country should give top priority to building an effective judicial system based on the rule of law; ensuring physical security to returning refugees and survivors of genocide; and promoting rapid economic growth in agriculture and small business sectors. In this regard, past social and economic policies can not be the model for Rwanda's future integrated development, which emphasizes human resources. The government will have to face the problem of ethnicity and political participation, and encourage a culture of tolerance and respect for democratic principles and human rights.
However, it appears increasingly probable that efforts at the national level alone are not sufficient to solve the refugee return problem. Because of the growing political and ethnic tensions in Burundi, the presence of two million Rwandese refugees in neighbouring states, and the high population density of the country, a regional approach will be key to longer-term resolution of the crisis. Such an approach may require resettlement of populations and greater regional political and economic integration. Whether Rwanda, its neighbours and the international community will take the bold steps necessary to achieve a durable regional solution to this complex problem is a question that history alone can answer.
Conclusion
International response to the humanitarian crisis provoked by the civil war and genocide has been generous and, in the emergency phase, rapid. Greater ambiguity about objectives, the legitimacy and capacity of the new government and the durability of peace, coupled with more deliberate (and hence time-consuming) processes for development assistance, have led to delays in assistance for reconstruction and development. In some cases simple political miscalculations have led to deadlock between government and donors.
Finally, the international community cannot be expected to do everything, nor should it try to do so. Most of the responsibility for reconstruction, rehabilitation, reconciliation and recovery belongs to the Rwandese. The ultimate determinant of the durability of solutions will be the degree to which they themselves believe in them and have, or would have, instituted them even without outside assistance. Nonetheless, the international community has already brought and can bring many resources to bear on the crisis. How these are used can tilt the balance in favour of peace and reconciliation and away from war and destruction.
Note:
1. This summary of Study IV, Rebuilding PostÐGenocide Rwanda was prepared by David Tardif-Douglin and Krishna Kumar