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The disciplined Tutsi rebel force led by Paul Kagame (left) in 1994 in Rwanda differs greatly from the ragtag opposition in Libya today. (Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty Images) |
StoneWard’s Rwanda Video
April 28, 2011
(photo used with permission)
This is Valentina…
She is a gifted paper bead roller, a mother, and a daughter of Christ. Until recently, she felt that she had no hope and no option other than prostitution to earn money to feed her children. Today, she told me she has hope because of the trainings she has received in bead rolling. During prayer requests today, hers was that her children would have the chance to live a normal life, to be well fed, and to be able to go to school.
Sadly, her story is not unique. There is no way to know the number of prostitutes in Rwanda but it is estimated at over 6,500 with around 70% in Kigali. Many women know of no other option to feed their children and most wouldn’t even call themselves prostitutes, only “mothers searching for food”. The Rwandan genocide left a certain demographic of women uneducated, emotionally scarred, and untrained. I have even been told that there is an alarming number of Rwandan university women who have turned to prostitution.
Although sad (and difficult for many of us to fully understand) there is hope. I have partnered with a brand new cooperative with the hope of providing a Christ-centered, holistic business training program designed with their healing and development in mind. These vulnerable women are being trained in vocational and technical skills, taught about health care options for themselves and for their children, and educated in regards to their rights as women, mothers, and citizens. They will learn productive and sustainable skills and will increase their capacity to change their own lives and the lives of the people in their communities. The overall hope is to eradicate prostitution by removing it as the women’s only means of income and by educating women in their rights and social responsibilities, organizing them into cooperatives and encouraging them to become active members of their communities.
Of the current 60+ women:
- the average age is 28 years old
- Only 36% of them have completed primary education
- 30% are totally illiterate
- More than half have an STD and many are HIV+
- 80% lost family in the genocide and all still suffer the consequences
- 90% are single mothers
- Over half are unable to provide more than one meal per day for their families
We seek to catalyze these women as change-agents in their communities and to equip them with the skills necessary for a life of purpose. The goal is that every woman will be instilled with a sense of confidence and pride in themselves as business women and productive members of society. And to give them a sense of encouragement and community from the other women in the program.
I am so thankful that we serve a gracious God and a God of second-chances and I want to do all that I can to give these women the chance that they deserve and desire. I truly believe that He will provide for the needs of this program.
If you are interested in getting involved, please email me at
kat.watson7@gmail.com subject line BINTI BUSINESS PROGRAM.
“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes.” Charles R. Swindoll
No one has shown this to me more profoundly than the women that I work with…. They choose (despite having nothing worldly in their favor) hard work, perserverence, and JOY. No matter our circumstances, no matter if they are in our control or not, not matter if we like them or not, the most important part of the circumstance you are in is in your attitude towards it. I love this quote because I have no way of knowing what kinds of things the day will bring (especially in Rwanda) but I can choose my attitude towards how I will face my day. I choose to take on the day with Joy, Integrity, Love, Gratitude, and an open mind to what God is teaching me. And I pray for the strength to do it!!
…AND
Libya is not ‘another Rwanda’
April 1, 2011
STEPHEN KINZER
Libya is not ‘another Rwanda’
By Stephen KinzerApril 1, 2011
ONE OF THE most effective arguments in favor of American intervention in Libya is that it is necessary to prevent “another Rwanda.’’ But the situation in Libya has nothing in common with what happened in Rwanda. Repeat: nothing in common.
The insurgency in Rwanda was an effort by members of an exiled communal group, the Tutsi, to make an “armed return’’ to a country from which the Hutu majority had expelled it. Unlike the ragtag bands of Libyans the West amorphously describes as “rebels,’’ the Tutsi army was one of the most disciplined insurgent forces ever seen in Africa. It had a clear leadership, headed by the visionary Paul Kagame, who today is president of Rwanda.
Kagame was a well-known figure who was in constant contact with United Nations officers and foreign leaders. Many came to admire him, and few feared what might happen in Rwanda if he took power. In Libya, it is impossible to predict what kind of a regime, if any, might emerge to replace the current tyranny. The possibility that Libya will become another Somalia, fragmented among its 140 tribes and a base for crime and terror, is vividly real.
Regimes that seize power by force reflect the insurgencies from which they spring. A strong, unified, and clearly focused rebel movement, like the one that took over Rwanda in 1994, is likely to run that kind of a government. A fractured, leaderless one cannot be expected to do so.
In the months before the Rwandan genocide, and as it was unfolding in the spring of 1994, no one expected or asked the United States to intervene by arming the insurgents or bombing government positions. All that was necessary was for the UN to reinforce its peacekeeping presence on the ground. The UN commander, General Romeo Dallaire, literally drove himself mad with frantic appeals to New York for reinforcements. He believed that just a few thousand peacekeepers could end the killing.
This was because the killing was not, as the West was led to believe, a spontaneous and uncontrollable spasm of “tribal violence,’’ but a calculated effort by a handful of Hutu politicians who saw it as their best hope to keep power. Robust policing by blue-uniformed soldiers would probably have stopped it. Such policing would have no effect in Libya, where there is no UN force on the ground and no one has a clear idea of who the “rebels’’ really are.
When the Rwandan genocide began, the ruling clique had been in power for less than 24 hours — not 42 years, like the current Libyan regime. General Dallaire was undoubtedly correct to believe that it would have been easily intimidated by a show of force. Staring down Moammar Khadafy will not be that easy.
Another key difference between Rwanda and Libya is that Rwanda was a wretchedly poor country with no resources. No one who intervened there could be accused of wanting to loot or pillage. Libya — surprise! — is rich in energy resources the world covets. No big power ever makes policy decisions about the Middle East without considering the oil-and-gas factor. Some, like Britain and the United States, want access to Libya’s resources, while others, like Russia, live off oil and gas exports and support intervention in the hope that it will throw the country into chaos and thereby remove a competitor from the market.
Preventing humanitarian disaster is a praiseworthy goal, but there is every chance that if Libya is engulfed in civil war, more people will suffer and die in coming years than Khadafy would have killed in reasserting control over his country. Nor is it reasonable to believe that if Western power helps install a new Libyan regime, that regime will be pro-Western.
Military interventions always end badly. They may be justified on rare occasions when the result of not intervening would be even worse than the result of intervening. Never, though, should the United States or any big power use force to change the course of events in another country and presume that things will work out well. The real winner in Libya may turn out to be Al Qaeda, which profits whenever chaos engulfs a Muslim country.
There may be urgent situations that force the United States to wage war. Libya may even be one of them. Americans should be told frankly, however, that war — not a “kinetic military action’’ — is what we are waging. Perhaps we, and our representatives in Congress, don’t want to hear this truth. Far easier to reach back into history for a parallel like the Rwandan genocide, which is as heart-rending as it is irrelevant. Libya is not Rwanda. In fact, one of the most daunting realities of this war is that Libya is Libya.
Stephen Kinzer teaches international relations at Boston University and is the author of “A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It.’’
