Human Rights Developments

Defending Human Rights

The Role of the International Community

The Rwandan League for Promoting and Defending Human Rights (La Ligue Rwandaise pour la Promotion et la Défense des Droits de l'Homme, LIPRODHOR) effectively documented abuses, particularly outside the capital, and monitored judicial proceedings related to the genocide. It also conducted a poll showing that 93 percent of the respondents favored the proposed gacaca system. LIPRODHOR, as well as other local human rights organizations, prepared to assist the gacaca process, both through training programs and by monitoring the sessions. The Association for the Defense of Human Rights and Public Liberties (Association pour la Défense des Droits Humains et des Libértés Publiques, ADL) carried out a useful study of villagization. The regional umbrella group, League for the Defense of Human Rights of the Great Lakes (La Ligue des Associations de Défense des Droits de l'homme des Grands Lacs, LDGL), began a campaign among its member organizations to end impunity in the region and to extend the mandate of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda into Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The National Human Rights Commission, elected in mid-1999, organized widespread public education efforts and worked quietly to resolve several problems concerning property and, most notably, to protect and secure the release of jailed Tutsi genocide survivors.

The Rwandan government made a detailed response to reports published by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, an initiative that would have been more promising had the responses been cooler in tone and more factual in content.