UN Women's executive director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka has outlined her vision of the role of women in Africa over the next five decades. Minna Salami picks out the key points Defining African feminism - our partner panel This week, more than 3000 delegates are at the annual meetings of the African Development Bank (AfDB) in Kigali discussing new strategies to tackle poverty, underdevelopment, and put...
As the 20th anniversary of bloodshed passes, former UN soldier Roméo Dallaire is honoured for his peacekeeping efforts Twenty years after the Rwandan genocide he tried to stop and stayed to witness, Roméo Dallaire still has flashbacks. In an interview before the US Holocaust Memorial Museum dinner last month, at which he received the museum's highest honour, the Elie Wiesel Award , the former...
Anti-gay laws were introduced to Africa by Western colonialists. Now, as former colonisers recognise LGBT rights Africa is still stuck in the past, writes Val Kalende At a time when more countries are moving towards inclusive human rights , Africa is taking steps backwards. Backwards, that is, specifically on the issue of gay rights, though sadly not to before colonialism, the era in which anti-gay...
As a major funder of vaccine delivery programmes, we ask Melinda Gates to share the people, products and organisations working to make immunisation in the poorest countries possible His Highness General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi The Crown Prince is a leading champion in the Middle East for improving child health. He is making sure children in Afghanistan...
The African country's first ice-cream parlour is giving a group of women a livelihood and the locals a taste for the frozen dessert From all across Rwanda, and even parts of neighbouring Burundi, people flock to the southern town of Butare to a little shop called Inzozi Nziza (Sweet Dreams). They come for a taste of the unknown, something most have never tasted the sweet, cold, velvety embrace of ice-cream....
Opposition politicians and rights watchdogs call on Kagame to respect constitution, which limits presidents to two terms Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, has been criticised after hinting that he could extend his rule beyond 2017, which would require changing the constitution. Rwandan presidents are limited to two seven-year terms, but there have been growing calls in state-controlled media for...
The US secretary of state insists the threat of genocide is intolerable and it should be intolerable everywhere Americans too often fail to remember the humanity at stake when our speed to denounce human rights abuses is not intrinsically linked to our current political interests, or historical and racial ties. While one country the Central African Republic currently unravels on the edge of genocide...
The problem with forgiveness as a kindly feeling towards a wrongdoer is that it is impossible for most of us On 6 April 1994, the president of Rwanda's private plane was shot down near Kigali. It was the spark for the 100 days of murder that we now know as genocide. Neighbours hacked neighbours to death in their beds with machetes. Bodies and body parts were piled up at the side of the road. Wild dogs...
The best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week Continue reading... ...
From Northern Ireland to the NHS, Blair left a real progressive blueprint. But the left has allowed it to be obliterated by Iraq The 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide disinterred some terrible acts, by warlords and technocrats, and also raised the spectre of Tony Blair, normally so quiet that when you hear a rumour that he's moved to Jerusalem, it sounds atmospherically true, even while being...
Exclusive: Naturalist and broadcaster has voices a 15-minute documentary on conservation efforts by the charity that continues the work of Dian Fossey, the primatologist made widely known by the film adaptation of her book, Gorillas in the Mist. 'Dian Fossey knew that the survival of mountain gorillas depended on the education and progress of communities around them,' Attenborough says in the film....
Broadcaster lends his support to conservation efforts to promote recovery of critically endangered ape David Attenborough has lent his support to a fresh push to protect Rwanda's endangered mountain gorillas. The naturalist and broadcaster has voiced a 15-minute documentary on conservation efforts by the charity that continues the work of Dian Fossey, the primatologist made widely known by the film...
Tony Blair defends the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that without it "you would have had the so-called Arab spring come to Iraq" ( Syria crisis: failure to intervene will have terrible consequences, says Blair , 7 April). Clearly there could be nothing worse than the people of Iraq rebelling against their leaders and deciding their own future. Given that this interview comes on the same...
Rwandans mark 20 years since the country's 100-day genocide at a commemoration in Kigali. United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon spoke of his regret that the international community did not do more to stop the mass killings. Rwanda's president Paul Kagame emphasised his belief that 'the history and root causes' go beyond Rwanda Continue reading... ...
The Vatican's reluctance to confront those accused of murder in its midst is rooted in its refusal to face up to the church's complicity in the events of 1994 There is a Roman Catholic priest at a medieval church an hour's drive from Paris who has been indicted by a United Nations court for genocide, extermination, murder and rape in Rwanda. Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka was notorious during the 1994...
It is clear that foreign aid has contributed to recovery, but Rwandans themselves have shaped the policy to heal a nation In July 1994 Rwanda was a shell of a nation . Some 800,000 people had been killed, over 300 lives lost every hour for the 100 days of the genocide, and millions more displaced from their homes. Its institutions, systems of government, and trust among its people were destroyed. There...
Widows' associations, which sprung up after the 1994 massacre, are bucking Rwandan tradition by setting up retirement homes When the killing finally ceased in Rwanda, close to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus had been slaughtered and up to half a million women raped. Continue reading... ...
Catholic leaders accused of acting as apologists for the slaughter by helping priests accused of murder in Rwanda evade justice It's hard to find anyone in Gisors with a bad word to say about Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka. Other priests at the small French town's imposing medieval Catholic church, an hour's drive north-west of Paris into the rich Normandy countryside, speak with admiration of his popularity...
Rwandans pack sports stadium two decades after the beginning of 100-day slaughter that led to more than a million deaths Sorrowful wails and sobs resounded as thousands of Rwandans packed the country's main sports stadium to mark the 20th anniversary of the beginning of a devastating 100-day genocide. President Paul Kagame and Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, lit a flame at the Kigali genocide...
A majority parliamentary presence, constitutional support, a drive to tackle gender-based violence post-genocide Rwanda seems a good place to be a woman. But the reality is more complex Striding through Bumbogo village, near Kigali, the Rwandan capital, Josette Uwanziga, 24, cuts a striking figure. Wearing a white dress, black jacket and patent leather sandals, and clutching her mobile phone and keys,...