Agathon Rwasa Refugees Essay

Across the globe there has been a massive influx of refugees seeking refuge and help. This is in a large part due to the extreme violence occurring in the Middle East, but it also stems from people leaving their native countries because of poverty, religious beliefs, or other things that put them at risk. The nations of Europe have been hit extremely hard with incoming refuges. This makes sense, seeing how close they are to the middle east. What may be surprising is that Canada is also having many problems arising because of the amount of refuges coming into the country. In this paper we shall examine the problems stemming from the refuges in Canada and consider some ways that these problems may be solved.

Rwanda is a country located in the middle of the African continent. The two ethnic groups present in the country lived in peace under their monarch until the arrival of Europeans. The Belgians arrival into Rwandan is what split the two ethnic groups of the Tutsi and Hutus, making them identify themselves with ID cards. This caused tension between the two groups as the Belgians favored the ethnic Tutsi, and made them the head of the government. Decade’s later Hutu extremists would take over the government and have revenge on the Tutsi. The new government would send out broadcasts calling on Hutus to kill their friends and neighbors. The Rwandan genocide would become the worst genocide to ever happen in Africa and one of the worst in the world. Today Rwanda’s recovery is surprisingly fast with the help of multiple nations and organizations. Rwanda’s recovery is nothing short of a miracle and is an amazing story of a war between two peoples.

universal refugee experience is shared with many refugees, including having to learn a new language, becoming sick and malnourished, and having to make new friends in their new home.

Since Burundi’s independence in 1962, there have been two instances of genocide: the 1972 mass killings of Hutus by the Tutsi-dominated government, and the 1993 mass killings of the Tutsis by the Hutu populace. Both of these events in Burundi received different levels of attention by the international community and the western media due to a lack of foreign governmental interest, political distraction, and an unwillingness to acknowledge the severity of these atrocities in Burundi. Interestingly, events of genocide occurring at times without these distractions received more foreign attention than those ignored due to these factors. Because of this, much of the western world is unaware of the Burundian genocide and events similar to it.

The Howard government’s difficulty in rebuilding the relationship with Indonesia was partly due to their ‘megaphone diplomacy’ (Capling 2008: 613). Howard’s rhetoric after election in 1997, moved away from Labour’s enthusiastic engagement with Asia, and towards a perception of an Australia less interdependent with Asia, emphasizing Western liberal democratic ties (Jones and Benvenuti 2006: 111). East Timor had reinforced the Indonesian perception that Australia had an arrogant neo-colonial foreign policy (Day 2015: 675). Yet, the burgeoning democracy following the fall of Suharto in 1999 gave the opportunity for better dialogue (Robert and Hadir 2015: 197). The 2001 Tampa affair became a stumbling block, as Howard publically criticized

The genocide had seen the country drawn down two lines: Hutu and Tutsi. And by 1995, the new ruling power, the Tutsi-based Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), who wanted to close down the refugee camps like Kibeho who held displaced Hutu’s. Among them were Hutu militia who feared reprisal for their crimes if they went back to their own villages. In the early staged of 1995 Kibeho was the largest Rwandan Refugee camp containing between 80,000 to 100,000 people. On April 22nd desperate to close down the camp, the RPF has opened fire. Over the course of the day the RPF unleashed machine gun fire and rocket propelled grenades on the captive refugees. Official numbers say just 300-odd people were killed in Kibeho, but Australian personnel counted at least 4000, some say

In 1994, pandemonium over took Rwanda and Burundi. In April to July, Rwanda was home to a genocide that claimed the life of some 500,000 to a million people. Starting around the same time, Burundi exploded into a civil war. Unlike in Rwanda, Burundi’s civil lasted for many years, the official end was in 2005. Although the events were different, both events were derived from ethnic issues, specifically between the Hutu and the Tutsi. In both countries, the Tutsi minority, only about fifteen percent of the population, were the targets of the Hutu majority, about eighty-five percent of the population. Caught in the middle of the chaos was one Tutsi man whose incredible journey was captured by Tracey Kidder in Strength in What Remains. Throughout

Rwanda has almost always been somewhat of a melting pot, much like other African nations. People of various ethnicities, occupations, and social classes lived in the country without much more trouble than the surrounding nations. Even so, much like other nations, Rwanda still had underlying issues beneath the surface that still had to be faced. Beginning on April 9th, 1994, the genocide had begun, leading to a systematic killing of over 800,000 Rwandans. For what reason were these people killed to begin with? Each of these people were killed for being either Tutsi, an upper-classed ethnic group in the nation, or for refusing to partake in the barbaric bloodletting. After the confrontations between the “upper class” Tutsi and the

For the past month, people have now just been informed about a war that is going on between the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda. This has been going on for about a month and it seems like the death toll is rising rapidly. The assailants of this current genocide are the Hutus. They are targeting members of the minority Tutsi community, as well as their political opponents. This is because the Tutsis have dominated Rwanda for a while and the majority being the Hutus demand change. With the help of accurate organisation, lists of government opponents are handed out to militias who kill them, along with all of their family members.

In the 1990’s, the mass media concentrated all its thoughtfulness on a refugee catastrophe. This was connected to the Rwanda Genocide, and the United Nation provided assistance for those distressed by these event (Herta, 2014, p. 263-264). Prior to this event The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) structured themselves and invaded the country. They had a purpose to force the Hutu dictatorship into reforming the country. They wanted the Tutsi regime to return back into the country. As per Herta (2014), The Great Lakes region was affected by the event, just about fifty-six million people lived below poverty levels, and this led to the greatest humanitarian effort of the decade. The target of this paper is to explain how this event was a genocide.

At the start of the 1994 Rwandan genocide 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed, during this conflict. Many of the surviving Rwandans who were lucky to escape the conflict poured over the border into the neighboring eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Shortly after the tragic genocide a new Tutsi government was formed and established in Rwanda, more than two million Hutus sought to seek refuge in eastern Congo. According to sources and The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that only 7% of the refugees who fled to eastern Congo were actual perpetrators of the genocide. These people are often referred to as Interhamwe or FDLR the Federation for the Liberation of Rwanda.

When mentioning countries within West Africa, Rwanda and “Congo” stand out as conflict prone countries when compared to Kenya in regards to internal issues. Rwanda is known for its genocidal level of internal conflict that occurred in 1994. The genocide occurred between the Hutu, ethnic majority, and the Tutsi, ethnic minority, resulting in upwards of 800,000 Tutsi dead. Eventually “the Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front gained control of the country through a military offensive in early July, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were dead and many more displaced from their homes. The RPF victory created 2 million more refugees (mainly Hutus) from Rwanda, exacerbating what had already become a full-blown humanitarian crisis.” The vast majority of the Rwandan refugees fled to The Democratic Republic of Congo, among them were many of the militiamen responsible for the genocide. These “refugees” soon aligned themselves with the Democratic Republic of Congo’s government and soon began attacking local Tutsi

Rwanda is a small country located in central Africa. It borders with Uganda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania. One of the most terrible “ethnic conflicts” occurred here in 1994, two tribes fought each other within the same territory, the rest of the world bizarrely ignored this event and thousands of people were killed. The event lasted 100 days and almost 1 million people died, even though the Rwanda government asked other countries for military

A refugee is defined as an individual who has been forced to leave their country due to political or religious reasons, or due to threat of war or violence. There were 19.5 million refugees worldwide at the end of 2014, 14.4 million under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), around 2.9 million more than in 2013. The other 5.1 million Palestinian refugees are registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). With the displacement of so many people, it is difficult to find countries willing to accept all the refugees. There are over 125 different countries that currently host refugees, and with this commitment comes the responsibility of ensuring these refugees have access to

The European refugee crisis began in 2015, when a rising number of refugees and migrants made the journey to the European Union (EU) to seek asylum. Refugees are people who have been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster. According to the data that was shown in Business Standard and also confirmed by BBC News, the top ten nations which account for 90% of the sea arrivals in 2015 were: Syria (49%), Afghanistan (21%), Iraq (8%), Eritrea (4%), Pakistan, Nigeria and Somalia (2 %), Sudan, Gambia and Mali (1%). Also the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees confirms that the top three nationalities of refugees are Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi. Of the refugees and migrants arriving in Europe by sea in 2015, 58% were men, 17% women and 25% children. (Wright, 2015). According to Eurostat, EU member states received over 1.2 million first time asylum applications in 2015, 4 countries (Germany, Hungary, Sweden, and Austria) received around two-thirds, while Latvia received a very small part of them.