Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Top 10

Airined: http://airi05.blogspot.com/
  • I picked Airiend because the government has the country in suffer and the people have no rights at all. Because if they do not obey they will be killed and they cannot protest. 
Luis Carlos: http://luis-carlos517.blogspot.com/

  • I picked Luis because Haiti is a very poor and they are in very need of help for food and shelter because of the earthquake and poorness. 
Natalia O.: http://mailyn12.blogspot.com/
  • I pick Natalia because they are in protest for a better government because they want a democracy.

Angelica H.: http://sudanhumanrights-hw.blogspot.com/
  • I picked Angelica because Sudan is having a lots of issues with racism, unequalness, and abuse. The government is trwating people very bad and not having them freedom The United Nations has to take action and help them so that they could hvae equality.
Adriana: http://whumanrights.blogspot.com/

  • I choose Tibet because China wants for them to be part of them. They need to have freedom because Chinese are try to kill people for what they belive in. 
Gustavo: http://italy-italia-buongiornoprincipessa.blogspot.com/

  • I picked Gustavo because in Italy there is a lot of racism and racism brings a lot of problem like violence, abuse ect....
Lizbedy: http://lizlinviolet.blogspot.com/
  • I pick Lizbedy because Indonesia are having many human rights issues because they don't have freedom of religion and military are abusing people.
Karolina: http://karosweet.blogspot.com/
  • I pick Karolina because the ex-president didn't wanted to leave and started to use forces and burning houses and the citizens are living in very bad conditions. I think that they really need urgent help.
Miguel C.: http://miguelwhblog.blogspot.com/

  • I choose miguel because Somalia have a lot of problems with police and militia violence and corruption. They need a better government that can help them with all their problems.

John: http://johnwh10b.blogspot.com/

  • I choose John because Women in India are being mistreated, and have almost no rights and a lot of violence is been made. Women shouldn't be mistreated and they did to have equal rights like men. 

My Proposal

Rwanda’s economy remains largely agricultural, with approximately 80% of the working population relying, at least partially, on this sector. Agriculture contributes around 39% to national GDP and generates about 63% of total export revenues. However, the sector continues to face substantial challenges that have stood in the way of it achieving its full potential.

As one of the world’s most densely populated landlocked countries, Rwanda faces a situation of land scarcity and, as a result, soil fertility has deteriorated dramatically over time. While fertilizer use, both organic and inorganic, is increasing, average applications per hectare remain low – even by regional standards. Fertility loss is compounded by the fact that a) almost 90% of arable land is on slopes of between 5 and 55% that require careful land husbandry and b) on more than half of these slopes torrential rains cause erosion and subsequently flooding and silting of valley bottoms.

Low current productivity, however, implies a huge potential for growth and profitability for a wide range of food and export crops, particularly given the country’s favorable agro-climatic conditions. Indeed, Rwanda’s agricultural sector provides a wealth of investment opportunities all along the value chain and includes a strong potential for regional trade. However, smallholder farmers lack the skills and are not able to access the technology or finance required to benefit from these opportunities.

Rwanda’s Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRS) advocates an approach of decentralization and increased private sector involvement in order to move towards their key objective of growth for poverty reduction. The priorities of the EDPRS are embodied in three flagship programs: Sustainable Growth for Jobs and Exports; Vision 2020 Umurenge and  Governance. Under the first flagship, the goal is to improve productivity and promote innovation. Given the importance of agriculture for growth and poverty reduction, ‘
a key priority of the EDPRS. The agriculture and food security strategy of the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI) – the second Strategic Plan for Agricultural Transformation (PSTA II) covering 2009-2012– articulates the approach and activities required for achieving 8-9% growth in Rwanda’s agriculture sector between 2009 and 2012—the goal set out in the country’s Vision 2020 and EDPRS. Consistent growth rates of 8% or more in agriculture, will allow Rwanda to achieve the first Millennium Development Goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Human Rights Issues

Rwandan engagements in the East Congo continue to perpetuate violence in the region. In January General Laurent Nkunda, the leader of the Congolese Tutsi militia the CNDP, was arrested and held in Rwanda. Meanwhile, the Rwandan government came to an agreement with the Congolese government to collaborate in attacking the Rwandan Hutu militia, the FDLR. Rwandan troops, perhaps 7,000, entered the DRC in late January 2009 to begin military operations. Amnesty International was concerned that the increase in military activity endangered the civilian population, especially after the end of the operation.
It is feared that Rwanda’s continuing support of militias is linked to participation in the trade of natural resources that has fueled the arms trade in the region. In Rwanda itself, the Kagame government, which had squelched the political process in its elections, continued to impose strict restrictions and to arrest journalists who voiced criticisms of the government. At the same time, a long held prisoner of conscience, the journalist Dominique Makeli, was released. A prisoner of conscience and journalist detained almost 12 years without trial, he was released by a Gacaca tribunal on Oct 16, 2008.
The restrictions on human rights NGOs eased somewhat, but still continued to prevent them from operating freely. Gacaca trials continued, with reports of witnesses being intimidated, and thousands arrested after their initial releases, increasing the prison population to more than 60,000 — the majority of whom remain incarcerated on charges of participating in the genocide. Many are held without any charges. The Rwandan government continues relatively frequently to charge individuals with participation in the genocide, resulting in the long-term imprisonment of opposition political candidates and the repression of the press and human rights organizations.

  We should care for Rwanda human rights issues because they are very important and they should be taken care of. Because their still problems with the hutus and the tutsi. we need to make peace for them. So that they could be in peace and not worried that when they leave their houses they could be shot or get kidnap or in a fight.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Rwanda History

Ruanda-Urundi: AD 1887-1914

 The highlands of Rwanda and Burundi, east of Lake Kivu, are the last part of Africa to be reached by Europeans in the colonial expansion of the late 19th century. Before that time local tradition tells of many centuries during which the Tutsi, a tall cattle-rearing people probably from the upper reaches of the Nile, infiltrate the area and win dominance over the Hutu, already in residence and living by agriculture. When first described by Europeans - and in particular by Speke, who encounters them east of Rwanda on his exploration to Lake Victoria - it is assumed that the distinction between Tutsi and Hutu is entirely racial. But this simple classification is blurred by intermarriage and by the custom of allowing people to become honorary members of the other group.A more valid description of the Tutsi-Hutu divide is by class and occupation. The Tutsi are the upper class and are mostly herdsmen. The Hutu are the lower class and for the most part live by farming.
 
The first European to enter Rwanda is a German, Count von Götzen, who visits the court of Rwabugiri in 1894. The next year the king dies. With Rwanda in turmoil over the succession, the Germans move in 1897, from Tanzania, to claim the region for the Kaiser. At the same time they claim Burundi, a separate kingdom to the south. The entire area is treated as one colony, to be known as Ruanda-Urundi. German rule in this most inaccessible of colonies is indirect, achieved mainly by placing agents at the courts of the various local rulers. So the German influence is not yet extensive when the region is taken abruptly from their hands after the outbreak of the European war in 1914.







A Belgian colony: AD 1914-1962

When Germany invades Belgium, at the start of World War I, the Belgians retaliate in a smaller way in central Africa. Belgian troops move east from the Belgian Congo to occupy (in 1916) Ruanda-Urundi. After the war the League of Nations confirms the existing state of affairs, granting Belgium in 1924 a mandate to administer the colony.From 1925 Ruanda-Urundi is linked with the neighbouring Belgian Congo, but colonial rule takes a very different form in the two territories. The administration of the Congo is centred in Brussels, but in Ruanda-Urundi it is left in the hands of the Tutsi aristocracy. Indeed the Belgians, observing the distinction between Tutsi and Hutu, make it the very basis of their colonial system.


The Hutu are subject to the forced labour which disfigures many European colonies in Africa, but here it is the Tutsi who supervise them at their tasks. From 1933 everyone in Ruanda-Urundi is issued with a racial identity card, defining them as Hutu (85%) or Tutsi (14%). The remaining 1% are the Twa, the remnants of the original Pygmies indigenous in this area.This Belgian attitude, setting in stone the distinction between the two groups and favouring one of them, prepares the ground for future violence (in earlier times racially based massacres have never occurred between Hutu and Tutsi). The predictable occasion for its outbreak is the rush towards independence in the late 1950s.
 
The problem is more immediately evident in Ruanda than in Urundi. In 1957 Hutu leaders in Ruanda publish a Hutu Manifesto, preparing their supporters for a future political conflict to be conducted entirely on ethnic lines. In 1959 the first outbreak of violence is sparked off when a group of Tutsi political activists in Gitirama beat up a Hutu rival, Dominique Mbonyumutwa.The resulting nationwide campaign of Hutu violence against Tutsis becomes known as 'the wind of destruction'. Over the coming months many Tutsis flee from Ruanda, including the 25-year-old hereditary ruler, the Mwami.




Independence: from AD 1962

The two parts of Ruanda-Urundi become independent in July 1962. There is pressure from the UN to federate as a single nation, but both opt to go their separate ways. Ruanda, in which ethnic violence has continued during 1960 and 1961, becomes a republic. The spelling of the name is changed to Rwanda.Urundi, by contrast, becomes independent as a constitutional monarchy, but again with a change of name, to Burundi.
  

 In December 1963 several hundred Tutsi guerrillas enter southern Rwanda from Burundi. They advance to within twelve miles of the capital, Kigali, before they are eliminated by the Rwandan army. This event prompts the government to declare a state of emergency, emphasizing the need to 'clear the bush' of subversive elements.Within days some 14,000 Tutsis are massacred in the southern province of Gikongoro, in a coordinated campaign described by Bertrand Russell as 'the most horrible and systematic massacre' since the Holocaust.
 
In the interim there is a coup within the Hutu regime. In 1973 Kayibanda is removed from power by a group of army officers who replace him with a major general, Juvénal Habyarimana. Habyarimana remains in power for twenty-one years, running a conventional self-serving military dictatorship (with enthusiastic support from several western countries, in particular France). But his Hutu ethnic policy creates an increasing problem on Rwanda's frontiers. Over the borders there are a vast number of mainly Tutsi refugees. As time passes they are increasingly unwelcome in their host countries. Efforts are made to send them home. But Rwanda rejects them.
 

In 1986 Habyarimana states as a matter of policy that there will be no right of return for Rwandan refugees. In the following year Rwandan exiles form the group which soon transforms the situation - the RPF or Rwandan Patriotic Front, committed to armed struggle against Habyarimana's regime.
The nucleus of the RPF is Tutsi officers serving in the Ugandan army. On a prearranged date, 1 October 1990, they desert from the army with their equipment and move south over the border into Rwanda. It is a minor invasion which eventually, against all the odds, puts an end to Habyarimana's regime. But it also provokes one of the century's most appalling acts of genocide.







The prelude to genocide: AD 1990-1994

President Habyarimina is able to repel the initial RPF invasion of northeastern Rwanda, in October 1990, largely thanks to French paratroops sent for the purpose by President Mitterand. But the event provides the pretext for a new wave of Tutsi persecution within Rwanda.
The country's most fervently racist newspaper publishes in December the Hutu Ten Commandments. This is a litany of hatred, attributing dishonesty and treachery not only to all Tutsis but also to any Hutu who befriends them. The eighth commandment, quoted at the time more often than any other, is: 'Hutus must stop having mercy on the Tutsis.' In 1991 a name is coined for this new level of ethnic triumphalism - Hutu Power.
 

To ensure the effectiveness of Hutu Power, Habiyarimina's government begins to recruit Hutu youth militias. These become known as the Interahamwe, meaning 'those who attack together'. In public these violent young men roar around on motorbikes, like any gang of hooligangs, and hold drunken rallies under portraits of President Habiyarimina. In private they gather together to perfect the skills of wielding machetes, setting fire to houses, and drawing up lists of local Tutsis and Hutu sympathizers.
In this mood ethnic violence increases steadily, and is often ratchetted up a sudden notch - as when, in March 1992, Radio Rwanda spreads a deliberately false rumour that a Tutsi plot to massacre Hutus has been discovered.
 

By 1992 President Habyarimana is himself beginning to disappoint his extremist supporters. Having failed to suppress the guerrillas of the RPF, and under international pressure to come to terms with them, he begins to negotiate. The news that he has agreed a ceasefire, in August 1992, provokes a new wave of attacks on Tutsis. Over the next year the peace process continues, alienating the president ever further from the thugs of Hutu Power.In August 1993, after talks at Arusha in Tanzania, Habyarimana signs a peace treaty with the RPF, officially bringing the war to an end. But the terms of the treaty go much further than that.
 

In what becomes known as the Arusha Accords, Habiyarimana accepts the right of return for all Rwanda's refugees, the merging of the RPF with the national army, and a transitional period leading up to elections and a democratic government. During this period power will reside with a provisional government in which, most startling of all, the RPF will be represented. And UN forces will be invited into Rwanda to secure this process.These concessions seem outrageous to the Interahamwe and their political masters. On 6 April 1994 a rocket, almost certainly fired by Hutu extremists, brings down a plane. In it are two presidents - Habyarimana, and the head of state of neighbouring Burundi.







Genocide: AD 1994

The assassination of the president, even if secretly contrived by extremist Hutus, is the immediate pretext for the orgy of Hutu extremism whipped up over the following weeks. Radio broadcasts urge people to do their duty and seek out the Tutsis and Tutsi-sympathizers living among them in their streets or villages. On April 29 the state radio announces that May 5 is to be the 'cleanup' day by which the capital, Kigali, must be cleansed of Tutsis. One notorious broadcast even suggests a necessary precaution in the interests of thoroughness; unborn children should be ripped from the wombs of dead Tutsi women who are pregnant.


In this atmosphere the Interahamwe and a large proportion of the ordinary Hutu population of Rwanda go to work with a frenzy probably unparalleled in human history. Between April and July some 800,000 Rwandans are slaughtered. And this is without the modern aids of mass destruction. The characteristic tool in Rwanda's genocide is the everyday machete, used more normally in agriculture. The UN forces, though by now present, are powerless to intervene.The terror of 1994 is followed by another human disaster, as some two million refugees flee to Zaire, Burundi and Tanzania. But these are for the most part Hutus rather than Tutsis. And they are trying to escape from the RPF, who resume their military campaign the day after the assassination of the president.







After genocide: AD 1994-1999

In the chaos of mid-1994 the RPF, capable of putting into the field an extremely well disciplined guerrilla force, makes rapid progress against the Rwandan army. By July RPF troops are in Kigali, and a provisional government is formed. By the end of August almost the entire country is under control.

Though largely led by Tutsis, the RPF has been from the start committed to racial equality. This is achieved in the first cabinet, whose members reflect the numerical balance in the country. Sixteen of its members are Hutus, six are Tutsis. But if the RPF government can rid itself of racism, this ideal proves very much harder to achieve in the nation.


The immediate problem is the refugee camps just over the border in Zaire. There are some 1.1 million Rwandans in these camps, most of them Hutus. But these are not normal camps. They are extensions of Hutu Power in exile. Among the ordinary refugees are members of the Interahamwe, the killers responsible for the genocide. Who have fled over the borders to avoid the advancing RPF.
The problem delays the return of the refugees to Rwanda, where the RPF government is otherwise eager to receive them. When the refugees do finally begin to stream back, late in 1996, some of the thugs of the Interahamwe are still among them. But the more notorious killers, unable to return, stay in Zaire, where they arm and train for violent sorties across the border.

Even the return of innocent refugees brings its own difficulties. Those who fled in 1994 come home reasonably quickly. They are familiar with present-day Rwanda. But the new hope offered by the RPF brings back many whose lives and expectations have been shaped by decades in other places - even the 'fifty-niners' who fled from the very first manifestation of Hutu intolerance. Such long-absent citizens can be hard to accomodate.
 
Worst of all, though, is the threat still posed by the Interahamwe. Armed incursions across the border lead to permanent infiltration, particularly in the northwest of the country. At times in 1998 few districts can be considered safe outside the capital, Kigali. To the advocates of Hutu Power this is seen as a war of liberation, similar to the one fought by the RPF in the early 1990s. But it ensures that the virus of ethnic hatred flourishes still in Rwanda.

Sudden appalling acts of violence against Tutsis and retaliation against Hutus disfigure the late 1990s, just as before in Rwanda's short history of independence. The scale is less, but the pattern is alarmingly familiar.

Rwanda Culture

The culture of Rwanda speak about its rich tradition and customs.

There are mostly three ethnic tribes in Rwanda namely Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. The people of Rwanda follow religions like Islam, Christianity and some African religion. People of Rwanda live in complete harmony even after the atrocious genocide of the year 1994. Almost 90% of the people of Rwandaindulge in agriculture as a way of their livelihood. The Rwanda people speak French, English and Rwanda language. The ethnic groups prefer to speak Kenyarwanda the local language of Rwanda. The refugees from Uganda and Kenya speak French and English which is almost 10%.

Rwanda culture is rich in its traditions and customs. Dances and songs form part of their unique culture. They have their unique forms of dances and folk songs. Their songs and dances denote folk tales and local fables. Rwanda people are quite dexterous in handicrafts. Beautiful baskets, paintings, wood engravings and ceramics items are hand made by people of Rwandapresenting a closer picture of the rich tradition and culture of Rwanda. The other objects that are remarkable from the historic point of view are well kept in the National Museum of Rwanda.

Rwanda culture is known for its warm welcome to guests and simplicity of food. Rwanda people eat simple food comprising of banana, potatoes, beans, meat and dairy products. At ceremonies full meals are not served only a piece of meat with drinks is served. When guests visits Rwanda homes they are offered food as gifts and refusing food from the host is considered as an insult. The host tastes the food first to ensure his guests that the food is safe for consumption.

Rwanda people celebrate many festivals because of their diverse cultures and religions. Id-Ul-Fitr, Christmas and Easter day are celebrated as per the dates. Apart from these there are local festivals also that depict their traditions. People of Rwanda celebrate their national festivals also. National Day and Independence Day are celebrated on Jul1 and July 4 respectively. September 8 and September 25 is celebrated as Culture Day and Kamarampaka day. April 7 is commemorated as National Mourning day.


http://www.mapsofworld.com/rwanda/people-culture-festivals/culture.html
http://www.everyculture.com/No-Sa/Rwanda.html
http://www.rwandatourism.com/culture.htm

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Rwanda

Location:  Central Africa, east of Democratic Republic of the Congo

Geografic cordinates: 2 00 S, 30 00 E

Population: 11,370,425

Government: republic; presidential, multiparty system

Education: 4.1% of GDP

Literacy Rates: definition: age 15 and over can read and write
                        total population: 70.4%
                        male: 76.3%
                        female: 64.7%
 
Languages:
Kinyarwanda (official) universal Bantu vernacular, French (official), English (official), Kiswahili (Swahili) used in commercial centers
 
Religions: Roman Catholic 56.5%, Protestant 26%, Adventist 11.1%, Muslim 4.6%, indigenous beliefs 0.1%, none 1.7% (2001)
 
Birth Rates: 36.74 births/1,000 population (2011 est.)