Update on UNRWA

 

STATEMENT BY THE COMMISSIONER-GENERAL OF UNRWA TO THE SECURITY COUNCIL

The Commissioner-General of UNRWA delivers his speech to members of the Security Council on the unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the unprecedented threats and challenges facing the agency

17 April 2024, New York

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Mr. President,

Members of the Council,

This is a time of seismic change in the Middle East.

At the heart of this region, the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees – UNRWA – is a stabilizing force.

In Gaza, the Agency is the backbone of the humanitarian operation, coordinating and providing lifesaving assistance.

Beyond Gaza, it has championed human development for Palestine Refugees for decades across the region.

Today, an insidious campaign to end UNRWA’s operations is underway, with serious implications for international peace and security.

It is in this context that the Council is asked to consider the existential challenges confronting the Agency.  

Mr. President,

Six months of relentless bombardment and a merciless siege have transformed Gaza beyond recognition.

Homes, schools, and hospitals have been reduced to rubble, under which countless bodies lie.

Children are bearing the brunt of this war.

More than 17,000 are separated from their families, left to face the horror of Gaza alone.

Children are killed, injured, and starved – deprived of any physical or psychological safety.

Across Gaza, a man-made famine is tightening its grip.

In the north, infants and young children have begun to die of malnutrition and dehydration.

Across the border, food and clean water wait. 

But UNRWA is denied permission to deliver this aid and save lives.

This outrage is occurring despite consecutive orders by the International Court of Justice to increase the flow of aid into Gaza – which can be done if there is sufficient political will.

You have the power to make the difference.

Members of the Council,  

UNRWA’s mandate is supported by an overwhelming majority of Member States.

Yet, the Agency is under enormous strain.

It is facing a campaign to push it out of the occupied Palestinian territory.

In Gaza, the government of Israel seeks to end UNRWA’s activities.

The Agency’s requests to deliver aid to the north are repeatedly denied.

Our staff are barred from coordination meetings between Israel and humanitarian actors.

Worse, UNRWA premises and staff have been targeted since the beginning of the war.

178 UNRWA personnel have been killed.

More than 160 UNWRA premises, mostly used as shelters, have been damaged or destroyed, killing more than 400 people.

Premises vacated by the Agency have been used for military purposes, by Israeli forces, Hamas, and other Palestinian armed groups.

Our Headquarters has been occupied militarily, and allegations have emerged concerning the existence of tunnels under our premises.

UNRWA personnel detained by Israeli security forces have shared harrowing accounts of mistreatment and torture in detention.

Mr. President,

We demand an independent investigation and accountability for the blatant disregard for the protected status of humanitarian workers, operations, and facilities under international law.

To do otherwise would set a dangerous precedent and compromise humanitarian work around the world. 

Members of the Council,

The situation in the occupied West Bank is also highly concerning.

Daily attacks by Israeli settlers, military incursions, and the destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure are part of a well-oiled system of segregation and oppression.

UNRWA’s operational space is shrinking, with arbitrary measures imposed by Israel to restrict the presence and movement of staff.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep our schools and health centers open and accessible.

Legislative and administrative actions to evict UNRWA from its headquarters in East Jerusalem and prohibit its activity on Israeli territory are also underway.

Mr. President,

Amid these challenges, serious allegations against individual UNRWA personnel in Gaza emerged in January.

Horrified by these allegations, I immediately terminated the appointments of those concerned.

The Secretary General ordered an investigation through the Office of Internal Oversight Services.  

In parallel, an Independent Review Group is assessing how UNRWA upholds neutrality - a core principle guiding our work.

Despite these prompt and decisive actions, a significant amount of donor funding remains suspended.

This has serious operational implications and undermines the financial sustainability of the Agency.

Be assured that we remain firmly committed to implementing the recommendations of the review and to strengthening existing safeguards against neutrality breaches.

Members of the Council,

As I informed the General Assembly in March, calls for UNRWA’s closure are not about adherence to humanitarian principles.

These calls are about ending the refugee status of millions of Palestinians.

They seek to change the long-standing political parameters for peace in the occupied Palestinian territory set by the resolutions of the General Assembly and this Council. 

Accusations that UNRWA deliberately perpetuates refugee status are false and dishonest.

The Agency exists because a political solution does not.

It exists in lieu of a State that can deliver critical public services.

The international community has long attempted to contain, rather than resolve, the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Lip-service is paid to the two-state solution each time an escalation occurs, costing lives and hope.

UNRWA was created 75 years ago as a temporary agency.

A stop-gap measure, pending a political answer to the question of Palestine.

If the international community truly commits to a political solution, UNRWA can retrieve its temporary nature by supporting a time-bound transition, delivering education, primary healthcare, and social support.

It can do so until a Palestinian administration takes over these services, absorbing UNRWA’s Palestinian personnel as civil servants.

Mr. President,

Dismantling UNRWA will have lasting repercussions.

In the short-term, it will deepen the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and accelerate the onset of famine.

In the longer-term, it will jeopardize the transition from ceasefire to ‘day after’ by depriving a traumatized population of essential services.

It will make nearly impossible the formidable task of bringing half a million deeply distressed girls and boys back to learning.

Failing to deliver on education will condemn an entire generation to despair – fueling anger, resentment, and endless cycles of violence.

A political solution cannot succeed in such a scenario.

Members of the Council,

Let me conclude with three appeals:

First, I call on Council Members to act in accordance with General Assembly Resolution 302 and safeguard UNRWA’s critical role both now and within the framework of a transition.

UNRWA has long been a custodian of the rights of Palestine Refugees.

It can only relinquish its central role of providing critical services and protecting human rights when a political solution is realized.

Until then, the political support of Member States must be matched by funding.

Second, I urge you to commit to a genuine political process culminating in a solution that can bring peace to Palestinians and Israelis.

This process must uphold Palestine Refugees’ rights and aspiration to a just and lasting political solution to their plight.

Third, we must acknowledge that a political process alone will not guarantee a sustainable peace.

The wounds that run deep in this region cannot be healed without cultivating empathy and rejecting the dehumanization that is rampant, whether in political rhetoric or in the misuse of new technologies in warfare.

We must refuse to choose between empathizing with either Palestinians or Israelis; or showing compassion for either Gazans or Israeli hostages and their families.

Instead, we must recognize – and reflect in our words and actions – that Palestinians and Israelis share a long and profound experience of grief and loss.

That they are equally deserving of a peaceful and secure future.

I urge you to help realize this future through principled multilateral action and a genuine commitment to peace.

Thank you.

 

Background Information: 

UNRWA is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. The United Nations General Assembly established UNRWA in 1949 with a mandate to provide humanitarian assistance and protection to registered Palestine refugees in the Agency’s area of operations pending a just and lasting solution to their plight.

UNRWA operates in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, The Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. 

Tens of thousands of Palestine refugees who lost their homes and livelihoods due to the 1948 conflict continue to be displaced and in need of support, nearly 75 years on.

UNRWA helps Palestine Refugees achieve their full potential in human development through quality services it provides in education, health care, relief and social services, protection, camp infrastructure and improvement, microfinance, and emergency assistance. UNRWA is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions.

Your support is crucial to help us provide emergency aid 
to displaced families in Gaza

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Arts and colonial history: Will France work on rendering looted artefacts?

 

• FROM AFP NEWS

'Titanic' Task Of Finding Plundered African Art In French Museums

By Jeremy Tordjman

April 15, 2024

During a visit to Burkina Faso in 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron pledged to return "African heritage to Africa" within five years, pushing other former colonial powers, including Belgium and Germany, to launch similar initiatives.

In 2021, France repatriated 26 royal treasures its soldiers took from Benin during colonial rule.

The effort has stalled, and in March the government indefinitely postponed a bill authorising the return of African and other cultural artefacts following right-wing resistance in the Senate.

French museums are nonetheless studying the origins of some 90,000 African objects in their archives.

With tens of thousands of African artworks in French museums, curators face a huge task in trying to identify which of these were plundered during colonial rule in the 19th and 20th centuries and should be returned.

Most -- 79,000 -- are in the Quai Branly museum in Paris dedicated to indigenous art from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas.

The task is "titanic and exhilarating", said Emilie Salaberry, head of the Angoulême Museum, which houses around 5,000 African objects.

"It's turned upside down how we understand our collections," she told AFP.

Identifying an object's provenance is becoming central to museum work, but tracking down the necessary information is hard and time-consuming.

France's Army Museum began its inventory in 2012 but has only been able to study around a quarter of its 2,248 African pieces.

And while it says there is a "reasonable hypothesis" that many are spoils of war, it has struggled to establish definitive conclusions.

"The main difficulty... is the relative lack of sources," a museum spokesperson told AFP.

Emilie Giraud, president of ICOM France, which oversees 600 museums, said: "It's real investigative work which requires cross-checking clues and finding sources that may be scattered, sometimes abroad, or might not even exist at all."

It is hoped the task will grow easier as this type of research becomes commonplace.

The University of Paris-Nanterre introduced a course dedicated to provenance in 2022, and the Louvre School at the heart of the famed museum followed suit in 2023.

Germany and France launched a three-year, 2.1-million-euro ($2.2 million) fund for provenance research in January.

"We need to be transparent about everything, including the inadequacies of our catalogues, our dating, and our designations," said Katia Kukawka, chief curator of the Aquitaine Museum, calling the job an "ethical imperative".

To ease the cost burden, the Aquitaine Museum, which has 2,500 African objects, is pooling resources with other organisations, including museums in Gabon and Cameroon.

But without the proposed law, it remains uncertain what criteria will determine when an object must be returned to Africa.

If it was illegally acquired, that might be sufficient, said Salaberry, of the Angouleme Museum, but the lack of clear historical records will continue to frustrate restitution efforts.

"There will be an enormous number of objects for which light can never be shed," she said.

Loans and long-term retainers could be an alternative to full restitution -- as Britain recently did for items from the Ashanti, or Asante, royal court in Ghana.

But not everyone was impressed with that.

As Nana Oforiatta Ayim, a culture adviser to Ghana's government, told the BBC: "Someone comes into your home and steals something, keeps it in their house, and then X amount of years later comes up and says 'I'm going to lend you your things back'. It doesn't make any sense."

(AFP)

Games - D-100

 

Is fractious France ready for an Olympics party?

PARIS (AFP)  – Organisers of the Paris Olympics have promised a “great national party” for the country, but with 100 days to go, France’s bitter politics and gloomy mindset are dampening the mood.

Those involved in the delivery of the Games, particularly chief organiser Tony Estanguet, remain upbeat.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity for our country to host this event, to welcome the world and also showcase what this country is about to do and deliver,” he said last week.

However, he admitted he was not surprised to hear complaints and doubts.

“We all know that before this kind of big event, there are always many questions, many concerns,” he added.

The construction work is on track and the budget looks set to be relatively contained compared to the huge blow-outs seen at the Athens, London or Rio de Janeiro Games.

*

France President Emmanuel Macron cut a slightly frustrated figure as he inaugurated a new aquatics centre in early April, speaking as if the public and media were not giving organisers enough credit.

“Look at the history of previous Games,” he urged, promising that the Paris edition would make the nation “proud”.

But instead of pride, the build-up has been marred by rows that go to the heart of a bitter national debate about identity and race.

Influential far-right politicians have criticised the official Games poster – a Christian cross was omitted from a depiction of a Paris landmark – as well as the choice of artists for the opening ceremony on July 26.

The prospect of an appearance by Franco-Malian R&B superstar Aya Nakamura caused an uproar among conservatives who criticised her supposed “vulgarity” – something described as “pure racism” by France’s culture minister.

*

Herve Le Bras, a veteran sociologist and author of a 2018 book titled “Feeling bad in a France that is doing well”, said he was sceptical that the Olympics could serve as a national celebration.

“There are lots of suggestions that they will underline the major fractures in France – notably the fracture between Paris and the rest of the country,” he said.

Why does the country feel so bad about itself while being among the richest in the world, with one of the most generous social security systems, and a lifestyle that is envied across the globe?

A major survey by the Ipsos group last September found eight out of 10 people thought the country was in decline and nearly one in two said they felt angry and contrarian.

In another era – during the decades of bullish post-war expansion in France, for example – the country might have been more ready to celebrate the Olympics, Le Bras suggests.

“We had a sense then everything was moving in the direction of progress. We’re not in that sort of period now,” he said.

*

Jean Viard, another well-known sociologist, believes that the risk of terrorism and wars in Europe and the Middle East are weighing on people’s minds.

“We live in an era where there is the climate danger, the war in Ukraine, the war in Israel,” he said. “People feel like they are surrounded by violence.”

The Olympics are also taking place at a time where the rising cost of living is causing economic hardship, making the often high ticket prices for events hard to stomach.

“You hear the same thing at all levels of society:

 ‘We’re organising a show, we’re paying for it, but we are not able to take part’,” said Paul Dietschy, a sports historian.

Other concerns include the fast-rising public debt – just as new estimates emerge suggesting that taxpayers could end up with an Olympics bill of up to €5 billion (S$7.25 billion).

And the gleaming new Olympic Village has been unveiled at a time when the country faces a housing crisis.

“That makes people uneasy,” Le Bras said. 

AFP

Sudan: One year of war

 

The text I wrote for 15 April:

Sudan on its knees after a year of brutal civil war 

A year ago on 15 April the civil war in Sudan began, with severe violence displacing millions. As hunger is rising to the level of famine, and aid is hardly reaching the displaced, France and Germany host a conference in Paris on Monday, to try to raise more funds for the forgotten victims of the dire conflict.  

 - Melissa Chemam

Supporters of the Sudanese armed popular resistance, which backs the army,
ride on trucks in Gedaref in eastern Sudan on 3 March 2024. © AFP

The war between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has sparked widespread hunger in the country, after destroying infrastructure and markets and displacing more than eight million people.

The InterAgency Working Group (IAWG), a consortium of both local and international humanitarian organisations is alerting the international community to the urgency of the needs, as France is to host an international summit this Monday in Paris.

Sudan's vast western region of Darfur was still reeling from the carnage of a 2003 conflict when this new war broke out in April 2023.

Fighting started on 15 April 2023 between Abdel Fattah al-Burhan's army and Mohammed Hamdan Daglo's (RSF).

Diplomats and aid workers rapidly left Sudan, effectively ceasing to serve those most vulnerable.

Looting, fighting, air strikes and roads cut by warring factions have isolated every region of the northeast African country more than three times the size of France.

Million of refugees and displaced people

The conflict has uprooted eight million people in Sudan, displacing 6.7 million inside the country, and 1.8 million in neighbouring countries.

Some 3.4 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian help in Chad only, following the arrival of large numbers of Sudanese refugees fleeing war.

More than 400,000 Sudanese refugees had already fled to Chad between 2003 and 2020, according to the UN.

"Provinces in the east of Chad are among the country's most vulnerable zones with poor access to basic services, and the arrival of refugees drastically exacerbates the need," French NGO Action Contre La Faim (ACF, or Action Against Hunger), said in a statement in April.

"It is urgent for donors to guarantee sustainable financing of the humanitarian response," said ACF's Chad director Henri-Noel Tatangang.

Only 4.5 percent of requirements are currently covered, he added.

Chad's transitional president Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno declared a "state of food and nutritional emergency" throughout the country in February.

Hundreds of thousands refugees are also fleeing the conflict in South Sudan and even Egypt. 

The United Nations had warned in March that life-saving food aid for hundreds of thousands of people pouring out of war-torn Sudan would grind to a halt in April without international funding.

It added it has been able to reach only 10 percent of Sudan's 48 million people, with the country on the brink of famine.

'Catastrophic hunger'

The World Food Programme (WFP) recently said it had negotiated the delivery of the first two convoys of food aid into Sudan's Darfur region in months.

One convoy with 1,300 tonnes of supplies was able to arrive via the Adre border crossing with Chad into West and Central Darfur, two areas already seeing emergency levels of hunger after being overrun by the Rapid Support Forces.

But the UN organisation is also raising warnings of impending famine caused by a one-year war and lack of access to food aid.

Catastrophic hunger, the term used for famine conditions, is expected in Khartoum and West Darfur, which have seen the fiercest attacks, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net), as well as in many other areas of Darfur that house millions of displaced people.

More than 18 million people facing acute hunger need assistance, the WFP says.

"I fear that we will see unprecedented levels of starvation and malnutrition sweep across Sudan this lean season," said WFP Sudan Country Director, Eddie Rowe, said in his latest statement, referring to the upcoming planting months.

The previous cereal harvest is half of previous levels according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, while prices of some goods have doubled.

Complicated access to aid

Aid is hardly reaching these populations, because of insecurity but also predation.

The belligerents are accused of using hunger as a weapon of war and diverting humanitarian aid.

This worries donors around the world, risking an impact on the quantity of aid obtained by humanitarians, according to Anette Hoffmann, an international relations researcher in The Hague, Netherlands.

She told RFI that she asks actors to adapt their methods. After decades of Omar al Bashir rule, including manipulation and diversion of aid being very prominent, NGOs have learned lessons. 

"Channeling aid to local responders minimises the risk of seeking aid weaponised by both parties, which is definitely a practice that is ongoing," she said.

Using multiple entry points through the various borders, by working, cutting out middlemen, working with smaller portions or less concentration of aid, are all mechanisms that can, maybe not eliminate but mitigate the risk of aid diversion and starvation as a weapon of war."

"This is the positive note on the 30 years of al-Bashir's dictatorship, these learnings and this is the time to apply them."

New state at war

Meanwhile, drones hit the Sudanese city of al-Gadaref the second week of April, eyewitnesses and the local governor said, bringing the country's devastating war to a calm farming state.

Almost half a million displaced people have taken refuge in around Gadaref, the capital of al-Gadaref State.

Eyewitnesses said at least two drones had targeted military installations in Gadaref, which is located just to the east of Gezira.

They said they heard explosions as well as anti-aircraft missiles being fired from the ground.

The RSF has taken control of the capital Khartoum, neighbouring Gezira state as well as most of the Darfur and Kordofan regions in the west, while the army holds the north and east of Sudan including its main Red Sea port.

 (with newswires) 

Saint Levant - '5am in Paris'

 

"J'me sens chez moi nulle part"... 

Saint Levant - Haifa in a Tesla

 

Performed by: Marwan Abdelhamid Produced by: Henry Morris (Blanco) Mixed/Mastered by: Ruhmvn

Reportage at La Friche, Marseille

 

Exhibition celebrates Marseille as 'gateway to the Global South' • RFI English

Visitors to Marseille's art venue, La Friche la Belle de Mai, can expect visual arts, performances, films and more in a gigantic space at the heart of the mediterranean city. 

Until July, they can also discover the work of the overseas French artists shaping the latest programme: "A Field of Islands".

Read my story here: https://www.rfi.fr/en/culture/20240407-exhibition-celebrates-marseille-as-gateway-to-the-global-south 

Read more on Rwanda

 

Rwanda + 30 years 

My articles:

RWANDAN GENOCIDE

Rwanda marks 30 years since genocide that horrified the world

Rwanda has begun 100 days of commemorations to mark the 30th anniversary of the 1994 genocide, in which 800,000 people, most of them from the Tutsi ethnic group, were massacred by Hutu militias.

Read the article here: https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20240407-rwanda-marks-30-years-since-genocide-that-horrified-the-world

06/04/2024

Thirty years after genocide, Rwanda's relations with France are slowly mending

France's relationship with Rwanda is gradually improving as French authorities acknowledge the country's responsibility in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which began 30 years ago this week. An estimated 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, died in the violence perpetrated by Hutus – a faction that France had a history of supporting.

Read the article here:  

https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20240406-thirty-years-after-genocide-rwanda-s-relations-with-france-are-slowly-shifting

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Via press agencies this Sunday - AFP 

The world 'failed us all' says Rwanda's Kagame in genocide commemorations

During a solemn ceremony to commemorate the 100-day massacre, Kagame said: "Rwanda was completely humbled by the magnitude of our loss. And the lessons we learned are engraved in blood.

"It was the international community which failed all of us, whether from contempt or cowardice," he said, addressing an audience that included several African heads of state and former US president Bill Clinton, who had called the genocide the biggest failure of his administration.

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Via press agencies this Sunday - Reuters 

April 7 (Reuters) - Following are some details about the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 that killed more than 1 million people. Rwanda marked the 30th anniversary on Sunday.

WAR:

* In 1990, rebels of the Tutsi-dominated Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded northern Rwanda from neighbouring Uganda. The RPF's success prompted President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, to speed up political reforms.

* In August 1993, Rwanda and the RPF signed a deal to end years of civil war, allowing for power-sharing and the return of refugees. Habyarimana was slow in implementing the agreement, and a transitional government failed to take off.

THE SPARK:

* On April 6, 1994, Habyarimana and neighbouring Burundi's president, Cyprien Ntaryamira - both Hutus - were killed in a rocket attack on their plane over the capital Kigali.

* The next day, presidential guards killed moderate Hutu Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana who had tried to calm tensions.

GENOCIDE:

* Habyarimana's death triggered 100 days of violence in the tiny country, perpetrated mainly by Hutus against Tutsis and moderate Hutus. More than a million people were killed, many butchered with machetes by militia known as Interahamwe.

* The RPF advanced and seized control of Rwanda after driving the 40,000-strong Hutu army and more than 2 million civilian Hutus into exile in Burundi, Tanzania and the former Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo.

* In July 1994 a new government was sworn in with Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu, named president and RPF commander Paul Kagame as vice president. Kagame was elected president in April 2000 and remains in the office.

TRIALS:

* In December 1996, Rwanda's first genocide trial opened at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, northern Tanzania.

* It ultimately heard from more than 3,000 witnesses, indicted 96 people, and sentenced 61 of them including ex-prime minister Jean Kambanda and former Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, who was accused of being in charge of the troops and Interahamwe which carried out the massacres. Both were given life sentences.

* Most people convicted in connection with the genocide were tried in community-based "gacaca" courts in Rwanda.

REGIONAL FALLOUT:

* Rwandan troops invaded Congo twice during the 1990s to try to hunt down perpetrators of the genocide. Conflict there is estimated to have killed several million people, mostly through hunger and disease. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) until 2012, described the 1998-2003 war in Congo as "the greatest armed conflict after the Second World War."

Rwanda + 30 years

 

Macron says France and allies 'could have stopped' the Rwandan genocide

President Emmanuel Macron believes France and its Western and African allies "could have stopped" Rwanda's 1994 genocide, but lacked the will to halt the slaughter of an estimated 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, the presidency has said.

Issued on: 05/04/2024 - 10:45

   

2 min

Photos from the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre. Rwanda will on Sunday begin commemorations to mark 30 years since the Tutsi genocide. © Ben Curtis / AP

By:Melissa Chemam with RFI

Macron expressed the view in a video message to be published on Sunday to mark the 30th anniversary of the genocide, which was carried out by Hutu extremists and lasted 100 days.

He will not be travelling to Rwanda to attend commemorations in Kigali alongside President Paul Kagame.

France will instead be represented by Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné.

Macron's message will emphasise that "when the phase of total extermination against the Tutsis began, the international community had the means to know and act", a French presidential official said, asking not to be named.

The president believes that at the time, the international community already had historical experience of witnessing genocide with the Holocaust in World War II and the mass killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey during World War I.

Macron will say that "France, which could have stopped the genocide with its Western and African allies, did not have the will" to do so, the official added.

Fr           French President Emmanuel Macron and Rwandan President Paul Kagame at the Presidential Palace in Kigali, Rwanda, on 27 May 2021. REUTERS 

'One more step'

Macron had already recognised France's "responsibilities" in the genocide during a visit to Rwanda in 2021 – adding only the survivors could grant "the gift of forgiveness".

Since he was elected in 2017, Macron commissioned a report on France’s role before and during the genocide and ordered the country’s archives to be opened to the public. 

The Ibuka France association, which brings together survivors of then genocide living in France, said Macon's message was an “important step”.

Its president, the historian Marcel Kabanda, told RFI: "It is reassuring for us to go to the 30th commemoration with this declaration."

Kabanda also called on France to go further by apologising to the victims of this genocide, and open the way to reparations – even if only through a symbolic gesture.

French historian Vincent Duclert, who chaired the commission responsible for shedding light on the role of France in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994, told RFI that Macron's speech was an example of ongoing efforts to recognised what happened.

He said France, which had military forces on the ground in Rwanda, could have intervened in April 1994.

The troops and other western troops had "all the means to do so" and organise "evacuation operations", he told RFI.

"This is the way to resolve past traumas."

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