Rwanda

ONE OF THE SMALLEST and most densely populated countries in Africa, Rwanda is also one of the poorest, with an estimated 60 percent of the population living below the poverty line. Rwanda has maintained an average of 160 out of 177 on the United Nations Human Development Index over the past five years. Poverty in Rwanda is highly concentrated among rural populations and in households headed by women, children, and former prisoners.

The origins of Rwanda's modern economic decline lie in a controversial ethnic conflict between Hutu and Tutsi groups. The diversification of separate ethnic groups and their eventual disparity were instilled by colonizers, who deemed Tutsi individuals as more apt to manage the majority population of Hutu workers. From the start, the so-called ethnic tensions felt in Rwanda and neighboring Burundi were a type of abstracted class system that has continued to have far-reaching economic consequences.

Political strife across Hutu-Tutsi lines escalated beginning in 1989, when a drop in the price of coffee and tea, Rwanda's two main exports, resulted in economic depression. The Hutu-Tutsi conflict reached a boiling point in April 1994, when President Juvénal Habyarimana was assassinated and a three-month civil war and genocide began. Nearly a decade later, in 2003, the new Rwandan government was officially installed by national [Page 940]democratic elections. Although Rwanda has been rebuilding its infrastructure for over 10 years, repercussions from the atrocities committed during the civil war have prevented a smooth transition to democratic rule and civil security.

June 17, 2005: World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz with country staff members donning traditional ladies' garb, from left, Chantal Kajangwe, Josianne Niyonkuru, Dimitri Mukanyirigira, and Nadege Uwineza. Photographer: James Kakwerere

Rwanda's population, which has doubled in the last 30 years despite the death of nearly one million people in the genocide, was growing at a rate of close to three percent in 2004, and was a major determinant of the na-tion's poverty problem.

An influx of refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2004, and the scheduled return of dissident Rwandans from the Dem-ocratic Republic of the Congo in 2005, exacerbated the overcrowding experienced in Rwanda, and lowered the standard of living in some regions.

In addition to these itinerant populations, in late July 2005, the Rwandan government decided to release tens of thousands of incarcerated individuals who had confessed to participating in the genocide, which significantly augmented the population of unemployed persons in Rwanda. These displaced populations caused overwhelming local problems, which affected poverty levels when they supplemented already crowded regions that faced shortages of social services and resources. Population movements after 1994 heavily affected Rwandan poverty.

Rwandan life expectancy, which was below 40 years in 2004, was a grim indicator of the child poverty that plagued postgenocide Rwanda. In many cases where entire families were decimated in 1994, orphaned children without extended family support became marginalized [Page 941]in a fierce competition for food, housing, and public healthcare. Moreover, poor health indicators compounded the intense struggle for survival faced by Rwanda's many destabilized populations. Approximately 60 percent of the population were without access to clean water in 2000 and an astronomical 92 percent of the population were without sanitation services. The prevalence of HIV/AIDS was a moderate five percent, but was expected to worsen as a result of the high incidence of unsafe reproductive habits.

...