Médecins Sans Frontières
This article is based on an interview with Rachel Kiddell-Monroe, who worked in Zaire and Rwanda with Médecins Sans Frontières Holland before, during and after the genocide against the Tutsis.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders.
When Rachel Kiddell-Monroe became Head of Mission for a drug distribution programme run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in December 1993, she had been told this would be a quiet, peaceful posting in Goma, former Zaire, just across the border from Rwanda. At that time, no-one could have predicted that Goma would soon become the emergency refuge for over a million people fleeing a genocide in Rwanda. [1]
Back in 1993, Goma was not the international organisation hotspot it is today. MSF was among a few international organisations working on regular development projects and drug distribution programmes in the Kivu region. MSF France had been sending volunteers to Rwanda since 1982 [2] and other MSF sections had been present in the Great Lakes region since the early 1990s. [3] Yet, despite MSF’s presence in the region for over a decade, the organisation failed to properly understand the political context in which it was operating and thus the dynamics of the ensuing conflict and refugee crisis. [4] MSF was confronted with ethical dilemmas which challenged its role as an impartial aid organisation in the midst of a genocide.
The genocide against the Tutsis began on the 6th of April 1994 in Rwanda. At the same time, pogroms against Tutsis in the Zairean Masisi region had been intensifying. Rachel Kiddell-Monroe had been gathering information from locals and documenting the incidents against Zairean Tutsis and she alerted the MSF Holland headquarters in Amsterdam. As she recalls:
This is 1994. There is no internet, no facebook, no social media. There is no communication except through a satellite telephone and very, very limited possibilities to send something through a computer. That is really important to understand because it completely impacted the way we talked about, understood and responded to the genocide. [5]
The headquarters initially dismissed the nature and severity of the conflict, creating tensions between Amsterdam and the field team in Goma.
So when I talked to people in Amsterdam and told them that there was a genocide, they thought I was overreacting. It was really hard because there was a denialism going on in Amsterdam. And that caused delays within the organisation. [6]
The denialism or fatalistic attitude of humanitarian organisations towards the Rwandan conflict was rooted in a colonial mindset, and a tendency to explain African conflicts as ‘tribal wars’. [7] The MSF teams on the ground were preoccupied with the technical aspect of their work, providing medical aid and tending to the injured rather than focusing on the political climate in which they were working. MSF’s initial analysis of the conflict as an inter-ethnic conflict was based on a colonial historiography of Rwanda and thus failed to recognize it as a politically designed genocide. [8]
As the ongoing massacres in Rwanda intensified and the number of victims grew, MSF began preparing camps in the neighbouring countries for refugees to arrive from Rwanda. The MSF programmes in Zaire were placed under the direction of the emergency department and Rachel Kiddell-Monroe became the MSF Field Emergency Coordinator in Goma. However, according to Kiddell-Monroe the refugees did not come right away: ’What happened is that Rwanda was sealed off. People were kept inside. It was like a fishbowl: we could look in and see what was happening but we couldn’t get in and people couldn’t get out’. [9] The Rwandan military and militias were guarding the borders and preventing the Tutsis from leaving the country. [10] MSF could not evacuate Rwandan Tutsis over the border, not even their own local staff. [11]
Nonetheless, on May 11th, 1994, 30,000 Rwandans had reached Zaire. [12] That number increased to somewhere between 800,000 and 1,000,000 by mid-July [13]:
I don’t think it was ever contemplated that there was going to be this huge outpour [Sic] of refugees towards Goma. The understanding of Rwanda was that the Western side of the country tended to be more safe, less reactionary, with a strong society, whereas the Eastern side was much more fragile. It was believed that there would be a much bigger exodus of people in the East. That was some kind of understanding about Rwanda that proved to be false. [14]
As the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) advanced into Rwanda and the conflict intensified, many Rwandans fled to Zaire. Facilitated by the French military presence in the West, the defeated Hutu militiamen and génocidaires crossed the border among the refugees and reached the MSF Goma refugee camp. While the field team was aware that armed soldiers and perpetrators were among the refugees, the MSF Charter mandated them to remain non-partisan and treat everyone in their camp indiscriminately [15]:
Seeing people crossing the border, I could not see the difference between Tutsi and Hutu. There is no difference. I did not know who perpetrated and who was a victim. They all came across with nothing and desperate, so the only response from my team was to help those people. [16]
Once refugees settled in Goma and the camp became more established, leadership among the refugees began to form: the instigators and perpetrators of the genocide were gaining influence within the camp, notably taking leadership roles within the food distribution programme. Although the number of refugees in the camp was largely overestimated and the UNHCR delivered food and aid supplies accordingly, malnutrition was still affecting 10% of the refugee population in November 1994. [17] This was a clear sign that food supplies were not reaching the most vulnerable and that aid was being diverted by the militias present in the camp [18]:
There were team discussion about this. Some were saying that what we’re doing is being taken completely the wrong way. We tried to access women and children directly and put a focus on water and food supplies. But we weren’t the only NGO there and we were working with other organisations. The inter-agency work was complicated because some agencies did not believe there were any aid diversions. [19]
The security climate in the camp deteriorated and refugees willing to return to Rwanda were regularly threatened or killed by the militias. [20] Refugees suspected of being Tutsi or accused of being RPF spies were also killed by the militias, sometimes in front of MSF workers. [21] The defeated Hutu government spread fear among the Rwandan population using radio and urged the Rwandans to join the refugee camps, where the leaders of the genocide could expand their control and re-establish their power. [22] Essentially, the refugees became “hostages” of the militiamen in Zaire who were exploiting refugees as a human shield and benefiting from foreign aid to rebuild and strengthen their armed groups in order to attack the RPF forces in Rwanda.
The camps replicated a “mini-Rwanda” and perpetrators inside were infiltrating into the leadership of the camp. It was a million people camp, this was the size of Montreal, so there was a lot of space for leaders to take their place. That’s when we started to ask ourselves, should we really be here or not? [23]
MSF came to face multiple ethical dilemmas: should it continue its work in Goma even though its aid was being exploited by militias with the intention to pursue their genocidal goals? Or should MSF leave the camps, thus cutting the resources and aid supplies of the militias but at the same time depriving vulnerable populations in need? [24]
While there was a consensus among the different MSF sections that the current aid diversion by former génocidaires was unacceptable, opinions diverged on how to deal with the situation. Some sections believed staying in the camp was a form of humanitarian resistance to the perpetrators of the genocide. [25] Furthermore, their presence as an international NGO would enable them to witness and document what was happening in the region and continue to draw media attention to the cause. MSF France, on the contrary, was determined to pull out its programmes, and argued that diversion of aid was a violation of its fundamental principles and continuing their distribution of food and aid supplies to militias was a form of complicity. [26]
MSF Holland in Goma first requested the UN Security Council to deploy an international police force to protect the refugees from the perpetrators in the refugee camps, a request that was never fulfilled. [27] Advocacy through media and lobbying the international community to intervene were also strategies used by MSF. However, since the security situation was already precarious in Zaire, MSF was very careful with its public statements regarding the militias in the camps, to avoid putting their field staff in further danger. [28] Yet, the international community failed to intervene and by the end of 1995, all sections of MSF had withdrawn from the camps. [29]
The ethical dilemmas MSF was confronted with in the refugee camps shows that humanitarian aid is only effective when it is provided jointly with judicial and political action. [30] As a medical, non-partisan humanitarian organisation, MSF cannot and should not fulfill all these mandates. In times of armed conflict, population displacements and gross violations of human rights, humanitarian relief in the form of medical assistance, water supply, and food distribution is simply not enough. [31] The refugee crisis in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo proved that an international intervention would have been critical to prevent the militias from instrumentalising humanitarian aid with full impunity and pursuing their genocidal agenda. Yet, since the refugee crisis was solely treated as a humanitarian crisis, its political dimensions were ignored and the international community failed to intervene in time.
Sources
[1] UNHCR. (2000) ‘The State of the World’s Refugees 2000’, Chapter 10, p.246
[2] Bradol, J-H and Le Pape, M. (2017) ‘Humanitarian aid, genocide and mass killings, Médecins Sans Frontières, The Rwandan Experience, 1982-97’, Manchester University Press. 10
[3] MSF. (2014) ‘Genocide of Rwandan Tutsi 1994’, Speaking Out, p.11
[4] Bradol, J-H and Le Pape, M. 24
[5] The author’s interview with Rachel Kiddell Monroe on the 10th of June 2020
[6] Ibid.
[7] Stapleton, T. (2018) ‘Africa : War and Conflict in the Twentieth Century’, Routledge.
[8] Bradol, J-H and Le Pape, M. 24
[9] The author’s interview with Rachel Kiddell Monroe on the 10th of June 2020
[10] MSF. (2014) ‘Genocide of Rwandan Tutsi 1994’, 17
[11] Ibid. 16
[12] Ibid. 31
[13] Bradol, J-H and Le Pape, M. 47
[14] The author’s interview with Rachel Kiddell Monroe on the 10th of June 2020
[15] Bradol, J-H and Le Pape, M. 47
[16] The author’s interview with Rachel Kiddell Monroe on the 10th of June 2020
[17] MSF. (2014) ‘Rwandan Refugee Camps in Zaire and Tanzania, 1994-1995’, Speaking Out, 55
[18] Ibid. 32
[19] The author’s interview with Rachel Kiddell Monroe on the 10th of June 2020
[20] Bradol, J-H and Le Pape, M. 59
[21] MSF. (2014) ‘Rwandan Refugee Camps in Zaire and Tanzania, 1994-1995, 55
[22] Ibid. 28
[23] The author’s interview with Rachel Kiddell Monroe on the 10th of June 2020
[24] MSF. (2014) ‘Rwandan Refugee Camps in Zaire and Tanzania, 1994-1995’, 8
[25] Bradol, J-H and Le Pape, M. 62
[26] Ibid. 63
[27] Ibid. 8
[28] Bradol, J-H and Le Pape, M. 4
[29] Ibid. 4
[30] Ibid. 88
[31] Ibid. 91