Yearbook 2018

Rwanda. At the September parliamentary elections, the ruling party Rwanda’s Patriotic Front (FPR) maintained its strong grip on power. President Paul Kagame’s party won 40 of the 53 directly elected seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Two other parties supporting the government, the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the Liberal Party (PL), received 5 and 4 seats respectively. The only allowed opposition party The Democratic Green Party got two seats, the party’s first. Two mandates trick the Social Party Imberakuri (PSI). A further 27 members were elected indirectly. They represent women, young people and people with disabilities. The quota system means that women are in the majority in the Chamber of Deputies.

• According to Abbreviationfinder: RWA is an three letter acronym for Rwanda.

According to Countryaah.com, Kigali is the capital city of Rwanda, a country located in Eastern Africa. The International Monetary Fund anticipated that the country’s growth in 2018 would be 7.2%, up one percentage point compared to 2017. Investments in the public sector as well as the construction and agricultural sectors boosted growth.

Rwanda, chairing the African Union (AU), hosted a summit in March when 44 African countries signed a free trade agreement, AfCFTA. However, the agreement must be approved by each country’s parliament.

Both China’s President Xi Jinping and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi made historic visits to Rwanda in July on their way to a summit in South Africa with the emerging economies of the BRICS group (Brazil, Russian Federation, India, China and South Africa). Both Asian giants promised loans and investment.

Women accounted for 50% of the new government Kagame appointed in October. Several ministers were replaced, including the Minister of Defense who has been sitting since 2010. Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo left the post after nine years when she became Secretary-General of the Organization de la Francophonie (OIF). It is a cultural, scientific and economic cooperation organization for French-speaking countries and regions.

This was preceded by a certain icing with France. Kagame visited Paris in May and was then promised by President Emmanuel Macron on French support for Rwanda to lead the OIF. Relations between the two countries have at times been strained when Rwanda blamed French officials for aiding the 1994 genocide.

In September, opposition politician Victoire Ingabire was pardoned, who in 2013 was sentenced to 15 years in prison for threatening security and impairing genocide in 1994. She was released together with over 2,000 prisoners.

Human rights groups maintained that the media and government opponents are under pressure and demanded that arbitrary imprisonment and torture be stopped.

Activist Diane Shima Rwigara was indicted in November for rioting. Prosecutors requested that she be sentenced to 22 years in prison. She was released to bail in October after more than a year in prison. Rwigara was barred from running for the 2017 presidential election.

In June, the Stockholm District Court sentenced a 49-year-old Rwandan-born man to life for genocide and international law. It was the third case of its kind tried in Sweden. The man has appealed to Svea Court of Appeal.

History. – President J. Habyarimana, in power since the military coup of July 1973, launched a return to constitutional government in December 1978, confirming himself in power through presidential elections. With the consultations of December 1981 for the first elected legislature, a three-year period of institutional adjustment was concluded. Although the system remained one-party, the electorate could choose between different candidates proposed within the lists of the Mouvement Révolutionnaire National pour le Développement (MRND), guaranteeing a minimum of mobility in the management team, at least locally. A certain stability characterized Rwandan political life after the launch of the ” Third Republic ”, although the effects of the split persisted. elite of power (completely Hutu after the destruction of the Tutsi hegemony in the 1960s) between the group coming from the southern regions and the exponents of the North who reached the top in 1973: among these the Hutus of Bushiru, the area of ​​origin of the president, prevailed. Between 1982 and 1983 several tens of thousands of Rwandans residing in Uganda crossed the border under the pressure of persecution, creating serious problems for the already overpopulated Rwanda. Despite the repatriation, in 1985, of 30,000 of these refugees (in addition to those who returned illegally) and the diversion of the flow to Tanzania, the problem continued to manifest itself and in 1986 Kigali declared that it was no longer willing to allow re-entry to the country. on pain of economic collapse. Between 1987 and 1988 the refugee problem was addressed in talks between the two governments, whose relations improved significantly. However, a similar issue arose in August 1988 on the southern border, when more than 38,000 Hutus took refuge in Rwanda following clashes with the Tutsis, in power in Burundi, in the northern provinces of this country. In March 1989 Habyarimana and the President of Burundi P. Buyoya formalized a joint plan for the stabilization of the border areas and the internal security of the two countries, deciding to strengthen economic cooperation.