Letter from the Rwandan Refugee Community in Zambia to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon visited Zambia in late February 2012, and in his address to the National Assembly, commended the government for giving ‘shelter and peace to hundreds of thousands of refugees.’ Regarding the Rwandan and Angolan cessation clauses, he stated he was ‘encouraged that [the] Government is considering local integration, in addition to voluntary repatriation.’ The Rwandan Refugee Community in Zambia penned the following letter to the Secretary-General, addressing the cessation clause.
24 February 2012
Mr Ban Ki-Moon
The Secretary-General,
The United Nations
Cc: The President of the Republic of Zambia
The High Commissioner UNHCR, Geneva
The Representative UNDP, Lusaka
The Regional Representative UNHCR, Lusaka
Caritas Zambia, Lusaka
The Zambia Episcopal Conference, ZEC, Lusaka
Council of Churches of Zambia, CCZ, Lusaka
The Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia, EFZ, Lusaka
Re: Rwandan Refugee Community in Zambia
Your Excellency,
We write as the Rwandan Refugee Community in Zambia. We are glad that you are visiting Zambia to experience at first hand its political and economic development, its scenic beauty and the hospitality of its people. We ourselves as Rwandan refugees have been glad to experience that same hospitality accorded to us by the Zambian government and people.
However we are troubled that those of us who left Rwanda between 1959 and 1998 face cessation of our refugee status under the 1951 Geneva Convention and 1969 OAU Convention by 30 June next year. We believe that return to Rwanda is not desirable while true reconciliation has not been achieved between the Tutsi who govern Rwanda and the majority Hutu population.
This is shown by the rejection by the Kigali government of the 2010 ‘Mapping Report’ published by the UN which recorded mass killings of Rwandese and Congolose Hutu in the DR Congo from 1993 to 2003 by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) army and its allies. Many members of our community in Zambia experienced the trauma of those events, seeing family members killed, and experiencing the separation of families. We applaud the UN for publishing the Report which has been repudiated by the Kigali Government, and you yourself went to Kigali to retain Rwandan support for the UN peace-keeping mission in Sudan. Observers may consider that your visit demonstrated less than whole-hearted support for the Report, and the requirement for accountability for war crimes by the RPF and its supporters.
Until crimes on both sides between Tutsi and Hutu are recognised and reparation made, we believe there cannot be meaningful peace in our country and therefore conditions for the removal of our refugee status at this time do not exist.
We ask that you uphold the conditions of the UN Charter to promote peace and justice for States and communities, in particular in Rwanda, and that the UNHCR decline to invoke the Cessation Clause of the 1951 UN Convention until Rwandan refugees worldwide consider it to be the right time to return home.
With best wishes for your visit,
Yours faithfully,
Egide Rwasibo
Representative, Rwandan Refugee Community
C/O Kanyama Catholic Parish
PO Box 35650,
Lusaka,
Zambia
