Overview
Twelve years on and Rwandese are still coming to terms with the tragic and traumatic consequences of one of the 20th centuries worst ever atrocities, which claimed the lives of close to a million people, in the space of just 100 days.
The UN backed International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda, was set up in 1995 as a mechanism to prosecute those responsible for the genocide. Since its inception 11 years ago only 27 people have been tried with 24 convictions and 3 acquittals.
Burdened with a huge backlog of cases, the ICTR is now under considerable pressure to complete its work before its mandate expires in 2008.
The genocide decimated Rwanda's already fragile economy, and has hampered its subsequent efforts to attract foreign investment.
The UN's Human Development Index ranks Rwanda 159 out of 177 countries, and more than half the population of 8.8 million lives on less than a dollar a day.
But new initiatives aim to remedy this situation. One such strategy is the Rwandan Export Investment Promotion Agency-REIPA. A REIPA conference in the capital Kigali last month attracted 700 participants including 268 foreign investors.
The US ambassador describes REIPA as a "one stop shopping centre" where investors can file all the paperwork without getting involved in the cumbersome bureaucratic process. While a Dutch embassy official cited high power costs as a deterrent for potential investors.
To counter this, the state minister for energy, Albert Butare, said the "77 million Kibuye methane plant scheduled for completion in 2008, will provide reliable power supply at competitive rates."
A disturbing trend is the fact that only half of civil servants have completed their secondary education, and just 68% of the population is literate.
The government introduced free primary education in 2003. This attracted many students but also put a strain on the system and diluted the quality of education children received. Read more...
