March 18, 2005

GENEVA – Eleven years after the genocide in Rwanda, an official of the Lutheran church there has called upon the United Nations (UN) to "learn from our mistakes of the past and to determine what approaches work in the prevention of genocide" in the future.

Based on what he experienced during the 1994 killings in his country, Rev. John Rutsindintwarane, general secretary of the Lutheran Church of Rwanda (LCR), appealed to the community of nations to take seriously all warning signals that suggest an impending genocide.

His statement formed the basis of a Lutheran World Federation (LWF) contribution to a UN thematic discussion on genocide prevention that took place in the context of a meeting of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) between 28 February and 1 March 2005 in Geneva, Switzerland. The UN Committee is the body of independent experts that monitors implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by its state parties.

Rutsindintwarane described malicious government propaganda directed against ethnic minorities, religions or skin color as a clear sign of an impending genocide. This was how the looming genocide in Rwanda became apparent two years before it actually occurred. The LCR official urged the UN to "send warnings to states which sponsor or generate such propaganda" in due time.

In order to prevent genocide before it happens, it was necessary to work on "trust building with people who are both perpetrators and victims of [hatred]," he said. Rutsindintwarane asked the UN to support such an approach, pointing out that international assistance was essential for local communities in crisis to reconstruct and engage in conflict transformation successfully.

The LCR general secretary urged that warnings expressed by UN staff members be heeded, as they were best able to assess the looming conflict situation. General Rom*o Dallaire, Commander of UN peacekeeping troops, who was sent to Rwanda in 1993, had repeatedly sent warnings to the UN headquarters. Radical Hutu militias in the Central African nation killed at least 800,000 Tutsis and moderate members of their own ethnic group between April and July 1994.

Mr Peter Prove, LWF Assistant to the General Secretary in the Office for International Affairs and Human Rights (OIAHR) emphasized that to prevent genocide before it happens, the LWF has been increasing its level of active cooperation with CERD and other human rights treaty bodies. These treaty bodies rely to a significant extent on information provided by civil society sources, in order to get a true picture of the situation in any given country.

According to Prove, "The LWF wishes to encourage the further development of international mechanisms to prevent genocide and other forms of human rights violations." The CERD has developed an early warning mechanism that has an obvious role in this regard.

The LWF Geneva secretariat affirmed its role as a bridge between the LCR and CERD in order to convey perspectives from the LWF constituency in Rwanda on steps that could be taken by the international community to better guard against genocide recurrence.

Rutsindintwarane is a Tutsi who survived the genocide in a refugee camp near the Tanzanian border. He is a leading figure in the 20,000-member LCR, which was officially registered in the country in 2001. It joined the LWF in 2002. Among other activities in Rwanda, the LWF runs a project for the reintegration of former genocide perpetrators in society, with the aim to sustaining long-term peace.

Lutheran World Information