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Leaders of Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zaire have asked The Carter Center to help them organize an unprecedented regional effort to promote reconciliation, justice, peace, stability, and development in the region.

The challenge is to create a climate that will stimulate the large-scale return of 1.7 million refugees to Rwanda and to find means to ensure peace among sections of society in Burundi, where there is now a "creeping civil war."

"The complex issues in the Great Lakes region urgently need to be addressed," former President Jimmy Carter said. "Since initiating last fall a regional effort to resolve their own problems, these leaders have developed a dynamic consultative relationship, which, ultimately, is the best hope for progress."

President Carter, former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, and former Mali President Amadou Toumani Toure were asked to facilitate the ongoing dialogue, which began in October 1995, when Zaire President Mobutu Sese Seko, Uganda President Yoweri Museveni, and then-Tanzania President Ali Hassan Mwinyi called for a regional initiative.

The Great Lakes crisis was precipitated by the mid-1994 genocide of at least 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus by the Hutu-dominated government in Rwanda. A Tutsi-led military force succeeded in driving Hutu extremists from the country, along with a large number of Hutu peasants, who fled in the wake of the fighting. Today, some 1.7 million Rwandan refugees live in camps in Zaire, Tanzania, and Burundi. Hundreds of thousands are displaced within their native countries.

Many refugees, living with great hardship, want to return home but are afraid to do so. The presence of the vast refugee camps disrupts the lives of inhabitants, who are outnumbered 10-to-1, and creates extensive environmental damage. It costs the United Nations approximately $1 million a day to operate the camps.

Steps Taken in Cairo to Assist Refugees

In November 1995, The Carter Center organized a heads-of-state summit, facilitated by President Carter and Archbishop Tutu, where leaders agreed on preliminary steps to improve the climate for refugee repatriation. Those steps included:

• preventing cross-border raids into any country;
• removing intimidators from camps to dispel fear among refugees that it is unsafe to return to Rwanda;
• returning military equipment to its country of origin, including that of the Rwandan government held in Zaire;
• delivering individuals indicted for crimes of genocide to the International Tribunal for Rwanda;
• identifying and destroying hate radio inciting violence in Burundi; and
• removing impediments to the return of as many refugees as possible.

Follow-up actions began in earnest as early as December 1995, but refugee movement has remained slow.

"While there have been positive steps, the political climate in the region and inside the camps remains tense, and the flow of refugees returning to Rwanda has been limited," President Carter said. "There remains an urgent need for a justice system to reassure returning refugees--some of whom perpetrated the genocide in 1994--that cases will be dealt with expeditiously and fairly."

From Jan. 13-26, co-facilitator Gen. Toure visited the region to assess progress toward peace and reconciliation.

"In Burundi, the situation is difficult, but a solution is possible," Gen. Toure told President Carter. "There are encouraging positive developments that have occurred, notably the cooperation be-tween the moderate Hutu party FRODEBU, the moderate Tutsi party UPRONA, and the army during attempted strikes in mid-January in Bujumbura," Gen. Toure said. "The international community should intensify its efforts to find ways to nurture and consolidate the seeds of progress that do exist in this troubled region."

The Carter Center is organizing another summit, scheduled for March, involving President Carter, other co-facilitators of the dialogue, and the Great Lakes heads-of-state. They will review progress on implementing the Cairo declaration, clarify further steps to create a stable environment that encourages refugees to return home, and assess other issues facing the region.

Great Lakes Leaders Follow Through on Cairo Summit Agreements
Developments since the Cairo Summit related to commitments made by the Great Lakes heads-of-state include:

• Significant bilateral meetings and improved relations among heads-of-state have created momentum in the joint initiative.

 

• On Feb. 13, the Zairian government returned Rwandan property brought into Zaire by Rwanda's former military forces as agreed in a joint declaration on Jan. 5.

 

• Zaire officials arrested at least eight camp leaders who were coercing refugees not to return to Rwanda and promised the Rwandan government that more intimidators would be arrested in the near future.

 

• U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Zaire, and Rwanda officials met twice to discuss how to apply a voluntary repatriation program aimed at progressively closing refugee camps in Zaire. UNHCR, Burundi, and Rwanda officials also met to discuss the repatriation of Rwandan refugees.

 

• In February, senior Rwandan government officials, including the prime minister, and senior officials of the host countries visited refugee camps in Tanzania and Burundi to talk with refugees about returning to Rwanda.

 

• The number of exploratory visits to Rwanda by refugees in Tanzanian camps considering returning to their homeland has increased.

 

• Rwandan refugees who have returned home from Zaire, Tanzania, and Burundi in past months appear to have been accommodated with relative ease.