General Assembly Session 58 meeting 82

The President

Next on the programme for this meeting is a message, via video transmission, from His Excellency Mr. Paul Kagame, President of the Rwandese Republic.

President Kagame (Rwanda)

On behalf of the people and the Government of Rwanda, I would like to extend our appreciation to the General Assembly for having adopted last December the resolution designating today, 7 April 2004, the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda.

We are grateful that today the General Assembly and people from different walks of life around the world are joining the people of Rwanda as we commemorate this most tragic and painful chapter in our nation's history.

Today, as we remember the over 1 million of our brothers and sisters who were killed in the genocide, we must ask ourselves whether appropriate measures are in place to ensure that genocide never happens again, anywhere in the world.

In Rwanda, we have adopted a two-pronged approach to banish the ideology of genocide.

One approach includes constitutional measures that prescribe punitive action against those who promote the harmful ideology of hate, intolerance and division within our communities.

The other approach includes implementing a proactive programme aimed at promoting national unity and reconciliation and encouraging open and frank discussions about the costly mistakes of the past so as to ensure that they are not repeated.

The international community for its part should ask whether an appropriate early-warning mechanism is in place to ensure that there is no repeat anywhere in the world of the events that occurred here in Rwanda in 1994. The response of the international community to a similar situation should not be allowed to be as inadequate as it was in Rwanda in 1994.

Over the past 10 years, Rwanda has made significant progress economically and politically. We held successful presidential and parliamentary elections in August and September last year. Local government has also been democratized and empowered through a process by which the central Government devolved power to the local authorities. We are promoting good and accountable governance, and have submitted ourselves for review under the Peer Review Mechanism of the New Partnership for Africa's Development.

Economically, we have begun the process of transforming our economy by encouraging innovation, competitiveness and improved Government performance. Our economy has been growing at a rate higher than 6 per cent per year, but we still face enormous problems in overcoming crippling poverty and underdevelopment.

We appeal to the international community to come to our assistance to support us as we rebuild our country. We are determined to overcome the problems of the past, and we are confident that the foundation for a stable Rwanda has been established.

We are now moving forward, in the understanding that our ideals of socio-economic prosperity and human dignity for all Rwandans will prevail.

The President

I now give the floor to the Deputy Secretary-General.

The Deputy Secretary-General

Ten years ago, the international community failed Rwanda. None of us -- neither the Security Council, nor the United Nations Secretariat, nor Governments in general, nor the international media -- paid enough attention to the gathering signs of disaster. And once the genocide was under way, none of us did enough to stop it, even when televised images of slaughter were visible all around the world.

Our sorrow is genuine and deep. But sorrow is of no use to the 800,000 people at least -- men, women and children -- who were left to suffer the most brutal of deaths. It will be of little meaning to future generations unless it is transformed into something more: real, concerted action, by the entire international community, to ensure that such a descent into horror is never again permitted.

The Secretary-General regrets that he is not with us today. But his choice of the Commission on Human Rights as the forum for his statement today seems to me highly appropriate. Genocide, after all, is the ultimate violation of human rights, and it usually comes as the climax of many lesser violations. Our human rights machinery therefore has a vital role to play in giving warning of its approach, and any action to prevent it must be grounded in a resolute effort to uphold universal human rights and human dignity.

In his statement, the Secretary-General announced an action plan which brings together a wide range of activities of the United Nations system under the rubric of preventing genocide. These activities include, first, preventing armed conflicts, and especially internal conflicts, which are never a sufficient explanation -- let alone an excuse -- for genocide, but which do seem to provide a necessary context and pretext for it. Preventing war is, indeed, the primary purpose of the United Nations and should be a conscious aim of our development work, as well as of our political and diplomatic activity.

Secondly, we must protect civilians, especially minorities, since they are genocide's most frequent targets. This is a task not only for our humanitarian and legal experts, but increasingly also for our peacekeepers -- many of whom today are no longer restricted to using force only in self-defence, but often mandated also to protect local civilians who are threatened with imminent violence. They must be given the resources they need to fulfil those mandates.

Thirdly, we must work to end impunity by helping to build and maintain robust judicial systems, both national and international. The past 10 years have seen spectacular developments in international criminal law, with the ground-breaking verdicts of the two United Nations tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia and the creation of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, as well as the International Criminal Court. But the work done by our peacekeepers and development workers to help individual countries to strengthen their police and judicial institutions is no less important. All of these efforts need to be extended and stepped up.

Fourthly, we must monitor the warning signs that tell us when genocide or other comparable disasters are approaching. This is an area where the United Nations human rights system, as well as our humanitarian funds and programmes, are already heavily engaged, in partnership with civil society organizations. But there are still conspicuous gaps in our capacity to analyse and manage the information that the system gathers so that we can use it to understand complex situations and suggest appropriate action.

At least some of those gaps should be filled by the new post that the Secretary-General announced: that of Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. The Adviser's mandate will refer not only to genocide but also to mass murder and other large-scale human rights violations, such as ethnic cleansing. He or she will work closely with the High Commissioner for Human Rights to collect information on potential or existing situations or threats of genocide, and their links to international peace and security.

Unlike the special rapporteurs, with whom we are familiar, the Special Adviser will not only report to the Commission on Human Rights but will also act as an early-warning mechanism to the Security Council and other parts of the system, including the General Assembly. He or she will report to those bodies through the Secretary-General and will make recommendations to the Security Council on actions to be taken to prevent genocide.

Indeed, I welcome the participation of the President of the Security Council in this meeting, since it is the action or inaction of the Council that will ultimately be decisive. No matter how good our early-warning systems may be, they will be of little use unless Member States can summon the political will to act when warning is received.

Right now, for example, we have abundant warning that something horrible is going on in the Greater Darfur region of the Sudan. As the Secretary-General said earlier today, it is vital that international humanitarian workers and human rights experts be given full access to the region and to the victims without further delay, and, he added, if that is denied, the international community must be prepared to take swift and appropriate action.

We cannot undo the past or reverse the crimes that were committed in Rwanda. We cannot repair the failure, but the world can be serious about preventing genocide. The Secretary-General said today that the legacy he would most wish to leave his successors is a United Nations better equipped to prevent genocide and able to act decisively when prevention fails. I believe we all have an obligation to help him achieve that, and I hope you will give him your support. That would be the best way to honour the victims who we remember today and to save those who might be victims tomorrow.

The President

Next we will hear the testimony of a Rwanda genocide survivor, Ms. Jacqueline Murekatete.

Ms. Murekatete (Rwanda)

Good morning. Let me begin by saying what a privilege and honour it is for me to be here today.

When I woke up this morning, I could not help but think that if the decisions that were made back in 1994 had been different, if the warnings that were sent both before the genocide and during the genocide had been heeded and if actions had been taken to prevent what is now referred to as a preventable genocide, then more than one million men, women and children would be here today, among them my parents, my six siblings, my uncles, aunts, cousins and numerous other relatives. But as we know, that was not the case, and we are here today.

It was only 10 years ago today that my family and I listened to radio-sponsored announcements, as my family was being called cockroaches. The announcer said Tutsis were cockroaches, they were snakes. Tutsis were our misfortune, the announcer said, and the final solution at that time was to kill all Tutsis and anybody who sympathized with them. Before that day in April 1994, I had lived comfortably with my family. My parents were farmers, and I had four brothers and two sisters. We all had goals and dreams of growing up and going to college and becoming something. That, of course, all changed in April of 1994.

When the genocide reached my village, I was away in a different province, in my grandmother's village. When the Hutu neighbours in my grandmother's village started killing, I first ran away to the nearby county office, where we sought to be protected. But it was only a few days until our Hutu neighbours started coming there, and every night they came and killed women, men and children. My grandmother and I were fortunate in that we managed to escape in time, and I soon found myself hiding in the house of a Hutu man who had agreed to hide my grandmother and me. It was only a few days before the neighbours found out that he was hiding cockroaches, as Tutsis were referred to during the genocide.

I remember sitting one morning, trembling, as a group of men armed with bloody machetes and clubs stood in front of my grandmother and me, knowing that that could have been just it for me. But I did indeed escape, and later on my grandmother placed me in an orphanage where every day I had to watch as children came in bleeding from machete blows, as children came in whose arms and legs had been hacked off by machetes. Every night I listened as toddlers of two and three years cried, wondering where their parents had gone, asking "When is my mother, when is my father going to come back for me?", knowing very well that their parents had all been killed.

As the orphanage got overcrowded, diseases started spreading, and it became almost a weekly routine to bury children. Of course, on a daily basis we were exposed to scenes such as that of Tutsi men and women being grabbed as they tried to climb the fences of the orphanage, seeking refuge, and we watched as armed Hutu men and boys grabbed them and took them to their death. Of course, every day we lived under constant fear, not knowing when we got up if we were going to live to see the next day. Indeed, many times men and boys armed with machetes and clubs came inside the orphanage and threatened the Italian priests, telling them they were going to kill every Tutsi child in the orphanage. Many times they packed us -- one time in the cafeteria -- and told us they were going to bomb the whole orphanage.

When the genocide ended, I was told by a surviving cousin that, one day during the genocide, my Hutu neighbours -- yes, the same Hutu neighbours whose kids I had played and gone to school with, the same Hutu neighbours whose kids my mother had never hesitated to feed and give milk whenever they came by -- these same neighbours had taken my parents, my four brothers and two sisters, my uncles, cousins, aunts and all the Tutsis in the village to the nearby river and had proceeded to butcher them with machetes, clubs and other similar instruments. Every day I was told of uncles who had been burned inside the house alive, of aunts who had been raped and mutilated before they were killed, of infants and toddlers who had been thrown alive into latrines and of massacres that had taken place in churches, as priests and nuns picked up machetes.

For a long time, it all did feel like it was a nightmare, a nightmare that I was going to wake up from and everything would be back to the way it was: I would have my parents, my brothers and my sisters and friends. But indeed I did wake up, and I realized that it was not a nightmare and that it had all occurred.

As we are gathered here today, I want us to remember all the innocent men, women and children who lost their lives in 1994 and the merciless and barbaric ways in which they died. But on this day I also want us to remember and keep in mind the suffering that is very prevalent in survivors today -- survivors such as those women who are now dying of AIDS, having been raped during the genocide; survivors such as those orphans who now wander the streets having nobody to care for them; and survivors such as those women and widows who watched as their children were butchered right in front of their eyes and who, in some cases, had to watch as their infants were taken off their backs and butchered. I want us to keep all their suffering in mind and to try to help them whenever and however we can.

In conclusion, as we leave here today, I want us to once again remember the devastating fact that the men, women and children who lost their lives in 1994 would be here today if the international community had heeded the countless warnings that were sent both before and during the genocide and had acted in time to prevent their death.

As we are here today, I want each of us to resolve and to vow to do all we can to ensure that events such as those that occurred in Rwanda in 1994 will never again occur, whether in Rwanda or elsewhere in the world. I do not think that a world without genocide is something that we should only dream of. It is not an unattainable dream: it is a reality that can be brought about, provided, of course, that each of us is willing to work for it. It is a reality that each of us must be willing to work for, both for our own sake and for that of our children. I thank you very much for your undivided attention, and I want to let you know that your presence here today is very much appreciated by the Rwandans in Rwanda, by the Rwandans elsewhere in the world and, especially, by survivors like myself.