Kagame: Rwanda breaking with its ugly past

"There are no easy questions and no easy answers in Rwanda, but you have to do something in any case," Rwandan President Paul Kagame told a packed audience Thursday afternoon.

Traveling to Princeton during a brief interlude in this year's session of the United Nations General Assembly, Kagame described both the progress Rwanda has made and the challenges his nation still faces since the devastating 1994 genocide, which left over 800,000 people dead.

"Most post-conflict reconstruction tends to revolve around the restoration of [socioeconomic] frameworks," Kagame said. He added, however, that "successful reconstruction depends ... on how new politics differ from the old practices" that created conflict. In reconstruction, "society makes a decisive break with its ugly past."

In the aftermath of the genocide, important infrastructure such as hospitals and schools had been destroyed or abandoned, and the professionals required to administer such facilities had fled the country, Kagame explained.

With the aid and consultation of many foreign nations, nongovernmental organizations and private entities, Rwanda has been able to achieve many of its reconstruction goals, including resettling millions of refugees, reintegrating militias, scaling down the army and discouraging the resurgence of ethnically-driven political debate.

Through careful privatization of state-run entities, the creation of new oversight agencies and other stabilization moves, Rwanda has improved its status and has set a goal to become a middle-income country by 2020, Kagame said.

"This is a journey that Rwandans are determined to make," Kagame added.

Kagame also answered questions from the audience on topics ranging from the influence of the World Trade Organization and the World Bank on Rwanda's development to his country's role in the genocide currently taking place in the Darfur region of Sudan.

"Rwanda contributes one of the largest contingents of troops in Darfur," Kagame said, about 2,000 of the 7,000 total African Union military personnel stationed there. He put those numbers in perspective, though, explaining that Darfur was roughly the size of France, and that the forces are too small and "not well equipped for the challenges of the area and the problems on the ground."

Kagame also criticized as feckless the performance of the International Criminal Tribunal in Rwanda. Kagame described the international court, which was established under the jurisdiction of the United Nations to prosecute crimes committed in Rwanda in 1994, as resourceintensive but ineffective. The tribunal has received $1.2 billion since its inception, Kagame said, but "with all those resources, tried only 35 cases," whereas the Rwandan national court system has tried thousands.

He also defended his government's anti-corruption efforts. "We don't need to learn it from the World Bank," Kagame said. "We know corruption is bad; it's as simple as that."

Kagame repeated criticism of the international community's reaction to the 1994 genocide. "I think they put in no effort at all," he said. "They could have stopped it, they could have prevented it, but nothing happened ... [even though] there was information in abundance."