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Frank Rusagara
Frank Rusagara (1955–2025) was a Rwandan military officer and political prisoner. He was arrested and charged with inciting insurrection and tarnishing the government’s image. Initially sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, the Court of Appeal in Kigali reduced his sentence while upholding his conviction in 2019. Background Rusagara held multiple senior positions in the Rwanda Defense Force. These include secretary general of the Defence Ministry and military attaché in the Rwandan High Commission in the United Kingdom. In 2013, he returned to Rwanda and was forced into retirement, along with 78 other military officers. 2014 Arrest and Sentence Frank Rusagara was arrested on August 18, 2014. It was claimed by the prosecution that Rusagara had criticized President Paul Kagame, had made complimentary remarks about the Rwanda National Congress (an exiled opposition group), and had called the country a “police state” and a “banana republic.” On January 5, 2016, h ...
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Ruanda-Urundi
Ruanda-Urundi (), later Rwanda-Burundi, was a colonial territory, once part of German East Africa, which was occupied by troops from the Belgian Congo during the East African campaign in World War I and was administered by Belgium under military occupation from 1916 to 1922. It was subsequently awarded to Belgium as a Class-B Mandate under the League of Nations in 1922 and became a Trust Territory of the United Nations in the aftermath of World War II and the dissolution of the League. In 1962 Ruanda-Urundi became the two independent states of Rwanda and Burundi. History Ruanda and Urundi were two separate kingdoms in the Great Lakes region before the Scramble for Africa. In 1897, the German Empire established a presence in Rwanda with the formation of an alliance with the king, beginning the colonial era. They were administered as two districts of German East Africa. The two monarchies were retained as part of the German policy of indirect rule, with the Ruandan king ( ...
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Freedom Now
Freedom Now is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit, non-partisan organization that protects individuals and communities from government repression and defends human rights through direct legal support, targeted high-leverage advocacy, and capacity-building analysis and assistance. Its approach is to use focused legal, political, and public relations advocacy efforts designed to compel the release of individuals deprived of their liberty in violation of the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other international human rights instruments. A small organization with limited resources, Freedom Now works closely with other human rights organizations and lawyers to identify high-impact cases that would benefit from the organization's approach. Notable campaigns Freedom Now represents 38 prisoners of conscience worldwide, including: * Abdulhadi Alkhawaja (Bahrain) *Loujain Alhathloul ...
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Rwandan Genocide
The Rwandan genocide occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu militias. The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 662,000 Tutsi deaths. In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group composed mostly of Tutsi refugees, invaded northern Rwanda from their base in Uganda, initiating the Rwandan Civil War. Over the course of the next three years, neither side was able to gain a decisive advantage. In an effort to bring the war to a peaceful end, the Rwandan government led by Hutu president, Juvénal Habyarimana signed the Arusha Accords (Rwanda), Arusha Accords with the RPF on 4 August 1993. The catalyst became assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, Habyarimana's assassination on 6 April 1994, creating a power vacuum and ending peace accords. Gen ...
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Human Rights In Rwanda
Human rights in Rwanda have been violated on a grand scale. The greatest violation is the Rwandan genocide of Tutsi in 1994. The post-genocide government is also responsible for grave violations of human rights. Before the genocide As decolonization ideas spread across Africa, a Tutsi party and Hutu party were created. Both became militarized, and in 1959, Tutsi attempted to assassinate Grégoire Kayibanda, the leader of PARMEHUTU. This resulted in the wind of destruction known as the "Social Revolution" in Rwanda, violence which pitted Hutu against Tutsi, killing 20,000 to 100,000 Tutsi and forcing more into exile. After the withdrawal of Belgium from Africa in 1962, Rwanda separated from Rwanda-Urundi by referendum, which also eliminated the Tutsi monarchy, the mwami. In 1963, the Hutu government killed 14,000 Tutsi, after Tutsi guerillas attacked Rwanda from Burundi. The government maintained mandatory ethnic identity cards, and capped Tutsi numbers in universities and t ...
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Johnston Busingye
Johnston Busingye is a Rwandan lawyer, who is the current High Commissioner of Rwanda to the United Kingdom. Previously, he served as the Minister of Justice and Attorney General, from 2013-2022. Background and education He has a Bachelor of Laws, obtained from Makerere University. He also holds a Diploma in Legal Practice, awarded by the Law Development Centre in Kampala. Career Johnston Busingye has held many positions in the Rwandan government and Rwandan judiciary. from 2006 until 2013, he served as the President of the High Court of Rwanda. Other responsibilities in the past, include as the National Prosecutor of Rwanda, as Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Justice(Minijust), and as Principal Judge of the East African Court of Justice (EACJ). In his capacity as Minister of Justice, he announced in July 2014, the decision by the government of Rwanda, not to become a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC). See also *Cabinet of Rwanda The Cabinet of Rwanda con ...
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Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human rights abusers to denounce abuse and respect human rights, and the group often works on behalf of refugees, children, migrants, and political prisoners. Human Rights Watch, in 1997, shared the Nobel Peace Prize as a founding member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, and it played a leading role in the 2008 treaty banning cluster munitions. The organization's annual expenses totaled $50.6 million in 2011, $69.2 million in 2014, and $75.5 million in 2017. History Human Rights Watch was co-founded by Robert L. Bernstein Jeri Laber and Aryeh Neier as a private American NGO in 1978, under the name Helsinki Watch, to monitor the then- Soviet Union's compliance with the Helsinki Accords. Helsinki Watch adopted a practic ...
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Universal Periodic Review
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a mechanism of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC) that emerged from the 2005 UN reform process.resolution 60/251of 3 April 2006, the UPR periodically examines the human rights performance of all 193 UN Member States. It is intended to complement, not duplicate, the work of other human rights mechanisms, including the UN human rights treaty bodies. This is the first international human rights mechanism to address all countries and all human rights. The Working Group on the UPR, which is composed of the HRC's 47 Member States and chaired by the HRC President, conducts country reviews. Principles and objectives HRResolution 5/1of 18 June 2007 and HRdecision 6/102of 27 September 2007 elaborated on the UPR's functions in its first cycle from 2008 - 2012. For the second and subsequent cycles, a few amendments were introduced to the UPR bHRC Resolution 16/21of 12 April 2011 anHRC decision 17/119of 19 July 2011, after a review by the ...
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Office Of The United Nations High Commissioner For Human Rights
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, commonly known as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) or the United Nations Human Rights Office, is a department of the Secretariat of the United Nations that works to promote and protect human rights that are guaranteed under international law and stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The office was established by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 December 1993 in the wake of the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights. The office is headed by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, who co-ordinates human rights activities throughout the United Nations System and acts as the secretariat of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. The eighth and current High Commissioner is Volker Türk of Austria, who succeeded Michelle Bachelet of Chile on 8 September 2022. In 2018–2019, the department had a budget of $201.6 million (3.7 per cent of t ...
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Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission
The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (formerly known as the Congressional Human Rights Caucus) is a bipartisan caucus of the United States House of Representatives. Its stated mission is "to promote, defend and advocate internationally recognized human rights norms in a nonpartisan manner, both within and outside of Congress, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other relevant human rights instruments." The commission was founded as the Human Rights Caucus in 1983 by Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, and John Porter, an Illinois Republican. Lantos was Hungarian by birth and had the distinction of being the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in the Congress. Cases In 1987, the caucus invited the 14th Dalai Lama to speak about the situation of Tibet. It was the first formal invitation to the Dalai Lama from a U.S. government organization. Lantos later alleged that two Tibetan nationalists were executed by China in retaliation for this visit. On ...
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African Commission On Human And Peoples' Rights
The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) is a quasi-judicial body tasked with promoting and protecting human rights and collective (peoples') rights throughout the African continent as well as interpreting the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and considering individual complaints of violations of the Charter. This includes investigating human rights violations, creating and approving programs of action towards encouraging human rights, and set up effect communication between them and states to get first hand information on violations of human rights. Although the ACHPR is under a regional government facility, they don't have any actual power and enforcement over laws. This ends up in them drafting up proposals to send up the chain of command to the Assembly of Heads of State and Government and they will act accordingly. The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) was based on the Banjul Charter which is the regional human rights ...
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Amnesty International
Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and supporters around the world. The stated mission of the organization is to campaign for "a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments." The organization has played a notable role on human rights issues due to its frequent citation in media and by world leaders. AI was founded in London in 1961 by the lawyer Peter Benenson. Its original focus was prisoners of conscience, with its remit widening in the 1970s, under the leadership of Seán MacBride and Martin Ennals to include miscarriages of justice and torture. In 1977, it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In the 1980s, its secretary general was Thomas Hammarber ...
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Working Group On Arbitrary Detention
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) is a body of independent human rights experts that investigate cases of arbitrary arrest and detention. Arbitrary arrest and detention is the imprisonment or detainment of an individual, by a State, without respect for due process. These actions may be in violation of international human rights law. The Working Group was established by resolution in 1991 by the former Commission on Human Rights. It is one of the thematic special procedures overseen by the United Nations Human Rights Council, and is therefore a subsidiary body of the UN. In 2019, Cambridge University Press published ''The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention: Commentary and Guide to Practice'', by international human rights lawyer Jared Genser, who has a 45–0 record litigating cases before the body.  This 650-page treatise is the only book-length how-to guide and commentary on the body's jurisprudence and Genser is now providing this book as a free, publicly ava ...
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