Yearbook 2010
According to COUNTRYAAH, Rwanda has a population of 12.3 million (2018). Rwanda continues to be praised for an orderly economy and low corruption, but the political climate is hardening. During the first months of the year, at least three people were killed and about sixty were injured in a number of hand grenade attacks in the capital Kigali. The government placed responsibility on former army chief Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, who moved to South Africa. He was shot in June in an attempted murder outside his home in Johannesburg. Journalist Jean LĂ©onard Rugambage, whose website newspaper Umuvugizi hinted at the regime’s involvement in the murder trial, was murdered shortly thereafter. The police investigation concluded that he had fallen victim to a revenge attack linked to the 1994 genocide.
- Abbreviation Finder: Check to see how the two letter abbreviation of RW stands for the country of Rwanda in geography.
In July, a leading representative of one of several unregistered opposition parties was also found murdered. Several opposition parties had been denied applications for official registration prior to the presidential election. The usual explanation was that they spread a hateful ideology, that is, spread to the views of the Hutu majority.
Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, leader of the United Democratic Party, was arrested by police both before and after the presidential election – in which she was not allowed to stand – and charged with cooperating with the terrorist organization and denying the genocide.
Before the election, the authorities closed several opposition newspapers and radio stations. The Reporters Without Borders organization classified Rwanda as one of the ten countries that most violated media freedom.
In the absence of real opposition, President Paul Kagame got 93 percent of the vote in the August election. Victoire Ingabire, at that time on the loose, urged the outside world not to recognize the election result. Observers from the Commonwealth found the absence of opposition candidates “disturbing”.
In March, former President’s wife Agathe Habyarimana was arrested in France, the days after President Nicolas Sarkozy visited Rwanda to repair relations between the countries. Habyarimana, considered one of the brains behind the genocide, was brought to safety by French soldiers in 1994 and has since lived in France. For the rest of the year, she fought hard in the courts to avoid extradition to Rwanda.
The UN-backed ICTR court in Tanzania is still investigating suspected Rwandan war criminals and sentenced several long prison sentences during the year. An undercover man charged in 2001 was arrested in Uganda during the year and extradited to ICTR. The Court still has a list of ten people searched worldwide.
In Finland, according to softwareleverage, a Rwandan war criminal was sentenced to life imprisonment. A 54-year-old Rwandan who Sweden decided to extradite to his home country was allowed to remain in custody pending a decision by the European Court of Justice on possible extradition.
Demography and economic geography. – Central-eastern African state. The population (10,515,973 residents at the 2012 census; 12,100,049 residents, according to an estimate by UNDESA, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, in 2014), with one of the highest densities in Africa, grew by 2, 7% per year and 72% is distributed in rural areas; the capital, Kigali, has 1,132,686 residents. The Rwanda welcomes about 85,000 refugees (mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo) and Rwandans who fled at the time of the genocide (1994) continue to return. With a life expectancy at birth of 64.1 years (2013), literacy at 71% and GDP per capita with purchasing power parity (PPA) of $ 1686 (2014), Rwanda ranks 151st in the Human Development Index. However, the strong economic growth of the last decade (on average, + 8%), based above all on agriculture (75% of the workforce) and exports (coffee, tea, coltan and casserite), has made it possible to reduce part poverty and inequality. The country remains dependent on international aid.