Lino Bordin on UNHCR and the invasion of Zaire

Lino Bordin, former UNHCR staff member. Interview with Nicoletta Fagiolo December 2024.

“I have never witnessed in my long 30-year career with the United Nations where I was always in refugee camps my whole life, that there were camps attacked in this way. Small vicissitudes between refugees and local populations, I have seen those, a bit in Somalia, not in Angola, but nothing comparable to what happened there, absolutely not.”  

LINO BORDIN

When over 1,2 million refugees fled into eastern Zaire in July 1994 escaping the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front’s (RPF) invasion and regime change in Rwanda, the UN’s refugee agency,UNHCR, and other humanitarian agencies were faced with a humanitarian catastrophe. 

A cholera outbreak in Zaire in July-August 1994 saw circa 50,000 Rwandans succumbed to the disease.

Where UNHCR failed deeply in its protection mandate was its deliberate suppression of what was actually happening inside Rwanda under the new Tutsi-led RPF regime, going as far as suppressing the Gersony report which it had commissioned. The 1994 Gersony report findings spoke of systematic massacres, during and after the 100-day invasion, which it equated to acts of genocide, that the RPF was committing against Hutus in Rwanda.

This suppression had dire consequences: it caused UNHCR to not respect its policy of non-refoulement of Rwandan refugees in eastern Zaire, namely when the situation in the country of origin is not safe for them, this policy should not be proposed as an option. Instead UNHCR’s policy shifted from one of facilitating to one of encouraging a return. This was in total contravention to UNHCR’s mandate and other international legal instruments. 

Worse when Rwanda and Uganda invaded Zaire in 1996, bombing the refugee camps and chasing and assassinating up to 800,000 Rwandan refugees in the Zairian forest, these crimes were not denounced but instead covered-up. 

In a forthcoming book on his experiences in refugee camps world-wide, where he often was on the frontline of major crisis, UNHCR field officer Lino Bordin dedicates a chapter on his experiences in Zaire from 1994-1997, today’s Democratic Republic of Congo. In this interview with filmmaker Nicoletta Fagiolo he recalls his three years as field officer spent in Goma and Bukavu, Zaire.

In these dark days when Goma is once again under attack by a Rwandan proxy, the M23, let us go back in time and look into the beginning of this war.

Nicoletta Fagiolo: When did you arrive in Zaire?

Lino Bordin: I arrived in Nairobi, the main UNHCR headquarters of that area of ​​Africa is in Nairobi, and everyone was talking about what was happening in Rwanda, I stayed there for 3-4 days, they gave me a briefing on what was happening, on what I was supposed to do more or less, and then I left for Goma on 24 October 1994.

The cholera had just ended, it is thought that circa 50,000 people died of cholera, in fact they buried them with excavators, threw lime on top, then covered them.

When I arrived the camps were already more or less formed, but they had to be defined, that is, we had to start the health, hygiene and school programs, organize the camps, find the logistics for food. We had 1 million and 200,000 refugees more or less, so the work was very intense and very difficult, also because everything we needed had to be brought from an African coast to central Africa.

I was the one who took care of the camps directly: every week I visited 3-4 camps, we held large meetings with the refugee representatives: they had divided the camps by neighborhoods and each neighborhood had elected its own representatives. The big camps like Mugunga for example had 300,000 inhabitants, but there was also Kibumba or Katale. We always had 100-120 people present in these large meetings that we held.

At a certain point we decided to tighten the assistance a bit to try to push them to return to Rwanda and the entire office embraced this policy, they hoped to be able to obtain a substantial repatriation.

The Rwandan military refugees were at Lac Vert, they were not assisted because they were military and had not laid down their weapons, that's why they were in a separate camp, while we only took care of the civilians. Yet these people had to also somehow eat and also have services, so the refugees gave them what was left over, or they made agreements.

Map UNHCR Refugee camps in eastern Zaire 1994-96

UNHCR decided to organize a census, the Americans wanted it, the donor countries wanted it. We organized to hold it on a Sunday in all the camps simultaneously, we employed all the United Nations agencies that were present, all the non-governmental organizations and in each camp we prepared the corridors, we had the ink, in short the whole organization for a census yet no one showed up.

That’s when we began to hear rumors that they wanted not to reduce, but to stop the food deliveries altogether, as a revenge because these people didn't show up and there I became really upset. I was at home, around half past twelve, I ate a bit. I wanted to take a nap for an hour and instead I couldn't sleep, I thought what do I tell these people now. I went back to the office and started arguing with a hundred refugee representatives, non-governmental organizations, the United Nations. They said we have to punish them, because they didn't show up for the census and so no food... imagine, really...

Nicoletta Fagiolo: But were the NGOs saying this, the United Nations ..

Lino Bordin: Even the NGOs, yes. 

Stigmatizing Rwandan refugees

Nicoletta Fagiolo: But this was propaganda to stigmatize the Hutu and other Rwandan refugees, because I also read that in the French-led Operation Turquoise area many were not helped by NGOs because it was said that they were génocidaires..

Lino Bordin: There was an attitude against these refugees, because they were génocidaires, it was said. For example, I remember an American colleague, with whom we even argued one day, who arrived at the office, he had just been in Mugunga camp. He was working in logistics and told me: “You know Lino I was in Mugunga camp and I was running down the street in the middle of the camp and there were a whole bunch of kids in the middle of the street, I felt like running over them with my car, thinking that they were the children of the génocidaires.” I said “but look, we were sent here to help these people, they didn’t tell us ‘you go there in the camps and choose who is a génocidaire and who is not a génocidaire.’, we don’t have the skills, nor the possibility. So I’m here to do my job, if it bothers you so much, maybe it’s better for you to leave because at that point it’s bad for you but also for the job itself.” He did this to me, a fuck you gesture. We argued, Joel Boutroue UNHCR head of Goma office was still there at the time, because I went to Joel and told him look what's happening, this, this and this with what his name was now I don't remember, and he told me "but Lino, let it go, I'll talk to him" and that's how things ended. Because there was this animosity.

For example, there was another colleague, Claire Bourgoise, she worked as a doctor, coming from Médecins Sans Frontières Belgium, at the time she took care of health issues in the field. There were many doctors who worked for around 80 dollars a month and she thought to lower it to 20 euros a month so they will be forced, not being able to live comfortably in the camps, to return to Rwanda. I also had a huge row with her. I told her: "but you don't love them”. She was a kind woman, a serious woman, who worked a lot, but she had her prejudices. It was a continuous struggle, for example another thing that comes to mind: there were no schools, not even for elementary school. So, I went to the fields and under a tree there was a Hutu teacher who had the children all sitting on a stone and he tried to teach with blackboards, in the middle of a field. I told them we need to give a little education to these children, otherwise what will they become. And they answered: "no because they are the children of the génocidaires, they too must be punished." I fought this, but I was unable to obtain any funding to be able to open a minimum of schooling in the fields, we just were unable to do anything about this because no one wanted to.

We wanted to try to do everything possible to repatriate them, so we tightened our assistance, and the more we thought that these people would return, instead these people would not return mainly for two reasons: first because they heard what was happening in Rwanda, there had been Kibeho[i] massacres and then they also had their own information, they were much more informed than we were about what was really happening in Rwanda against those who had already returned and those who hadn't fled, who had stayed behind. They had to go through gacaca-like courts that were run by the local population and obviously for the local population they were all génocidaires, it was said, maybe even just to take over the returnees’ houses, all kinds of things that happen in those situations.

Nicoletta Fagiolo: Since it was often said that Kagame's pretext, when he invaded Zaire in 1996, was that the camps were armed and that they could carry out reprisals in Rwanda, but if all the armed people from the previous government were in a single camp, Lac Vert, why was it a pretext that Kagame was able to use, because maybe it would have been enough to surround that particular camp, because they were not armed in all the camps[ii]. 

Lino Bordin: I did not have the impression that the camps were armed. In Lac Vert, yes, I went to meet, not often, because I also tried to avoid, with Bizimungi[iii], the general and I saw them a couple of times with my African colleagues, who had excellent relations with them. Otherwise it didn't seem like the camps were armed to me, and I was in the camps every day. 

An international war

Nicoletta Fagiolo: And when the war arrived?

Lino Bordin: In Goma we started talking about war. The Banyamulenge who are Tutsi refugees, we estimated they were circa 10-15,000 inhabitants, who lived south of Lake Tanganyika, south of Uvira. These Tutsis, who had been living in Zaire for 30 years, where doing so quite peacefully in my opinion, they had their interests, their businesses. I didn't see any conflictual situations at the beginning when I arrived.

I don't think the Tutsis were discriminated against. On their passport it wasn't written Congolese. But that’s also normal. In Jordan, the Palestinians in Jordan, who are 2.5 million, they didn't write Jordanian but Palestinian in their passports. And no one could think that they would ask to be given a Jordanian nationality. Everywhere in the world it’s like that. Only there it isn’t? no in my opinion it was all a set-up.

Nicoletta Fagiolo: So as not to call it an international war?

Lino Bordin: Yes. In fact, when we crossed the border and entered Rwanda and they (the Rwandan authorities) sent us to Nairobi, one of the reasons why they didn't want us to speak to journalists was because they didn't want us to say that we had seen the Rwandan Tutsi army enter the camps and do what they did…

Kabila, helped mainly by Rwandans, some Ugandans too, and some Burundians, became the leader of this liberation movement against the central government and they started moving from the south to reach Bukavu. They first stormed the refugee camps in Bukavu, then they covered the 120 kilometers between Bukavu and Goma in a couple of days, and we knew they were coming.

The invasion began from Rwanda and they are all Rwandan military, all very well dressed, super equipped in a way, very efficient, definitely. The governor wanted me to evacuate all those who were left in Goma, about 100 foreigners, who were waiting for the war to begin. All the others, as is done usually when a war may explode, had been sent away two weeks before as non-essential personnel.

We didn't know what was happening in the camps, we only started to hear about it little by little... they attacked Katale towards the North, Rutshuru, Katale had 220,000 people, a little further down there was Kahindo also 120,000 refugees, even further down in a radius of 120 kilometers there was Kibumba, 220,000 refugees there, then there was Goma and after Goma Mugunga, in Mugunga there was the entire former Rwandan government, with parliamentarians, doctors... it was all one people...

The war exploded all around the office in Goma and we were locked inside. We were in telephone contact with Geneva. Around 11:30 in the evening UNHCR’s deputy secretary called me from Geneva, I don't remember his name, an Austrian and he said "Look Lino they will come and pick you up around 3 in the morning.” I asked him where we are going?” he answered: “ I spoke with the authorities and they will let you pass, but I beg you, they don't want you to speak to journalists, because journalists are already there at the border waiting.” We left the office, there were about twenty cars with many members of the NGOs. 

We arrived at the border and I got out and raised the barrier and everyone passed… as we arrived there all the journalists wanted to interview us. In fact I even argued with a journalist from Rai uno I think, because he wanted to talk to me, interview me and I told him no. At a certain point I even got a little annoyed because the authorities were all around and were looking at us with menacing eyes, and since they had wanted this policy. I learned later that they wanted us to avoid telling the journalists who had invaded the Congo… 

Nicoletta Fagiolo: Incredible 

Lino Bordin: And from there they took us directly to Kigali. In Kigali we were able to go to our office, we stayed there for about half an hour and from there they took us straight back to the airport to Nairobi…

Searching lost refugees

In Kenya I was told to go to Uganda to see if we could get humanitarian assistance through there to Zaire with trucks, and also because some Canadians were arriving in Entebbe near Kampala, who would fly over the forests, so I could see if I could spot the refugees in Zaire. Every morning I went from Kampala city to Entebbe to ask the Canadian soldiers to come on the plane with them for reconnaissance. They refused. And every day they came back and said “ there were clouds” or “ it was raining”,” the forests are thick and we couldn't see anything.” This lasted for circa a month. 

I then left Kampala to reach the border yet when I got there the local authorities wouldn't let me near the border. Even if it had been possible, they had no intention of getting assistance through the border from Uganda, because they had decided to eliminate them all...

Nicoletta Fagiolo: The RPF wanted to eliminate all of them?

Lino Bordin: Yes, yes but including the Americans and the English, in my opinion they were all in agreement.

So, from there, after Kampala since I was unable to obtain anything, not even information, I returned to Bukavu, one month later, in December 1996. We rebuilt the team and started operating again. But we were also looking for these refugees who had fled into the forest. 

I rented a small plane and we went to search above the forests towards Shabunda, and you saw every now and then there was a clearing in the middle of the trees and you saw that people had passed, maybe you saw a sheet stretched out between two trees, or where they had made fires. Then we came across an Italian mission that I didn't know about, in Shabunda, and we started talking. They told me that for months they had been seeing a destroyed, unfortunate procession of people, passing through the forest. Some were going south, while Tingi Tingi was further north. Those who escaped from the Goma camps were going towards Tingi Tingi and those who were fleeing from the Bukavu camps were going south.

They told me that the worst death in the forests was for those who couldn't take it anymore, those who couldn't walk anymore and the insects ate them, there were no big animals, insects. Insects that ate old people, children, pregnant women... no look, it was a thing... 

Nicoletta Fagiolo: You explained to me that more or less 400,000 had returned to Rwanda and therefore more or less 800,000 thousand remained and died in the forest. 

Lino Bordin: Yes 

Nicoletta Fagiolo: Why did they want to downplay this number, since UNHCR spoke of 300,000 lost in the forest… 

Lino Bordin: In my opinion they were more. Maybe there were a million in total in that area. The international community, especially America and Great Britain, started to complain, for political reasons, as well as economic reasons, they cost an immense amount, I think it was a million dollars a day just for the Goma camps, so they were very expensive. 

Nicoletta Fagiolo: Why was it obvious that the Americans and the English were behind this invasion? 

Lino Bordin: Because it was known. For example, the United Nations in Kigali, from whom did they actually take their orders, people were talking in the city.

Nicoletta Fagiolo: And the French-led Operation Turquoise? 

Lino Bordin: The French saved many Hutus. The French had not participated in the war.

Nicoletta Fagiolo: Those who fled Rwanda to the camps, were they exclusively Hutus, or were there also Tutsis, mixed families… 

Lino Bordin: Many came from mixed families. Mainly half and half, for example a Hutu father and a Tutsi mother… like the family of my friends, I won't tell you who they are because now they are all refugees in Europe and they send me photos of their children. It makes me want to cry. The photos of their children who graduated. And they write to me and tell me: “Lino we are all alive thanks to you.” I receive letters from Canada, Australia. They remember me..

Nicoletta Fagiolo: And your colleagues? Why did they picture Hutus or these refugees in general in a bad light? 

Lino Bordin: One colleague would say “let's kill them all”! A Sicilian colleague of mine, with whom I am still friends, I tried to explain to her that in my opinion more than a genocide, this had been a revolt against a certain system, that for centuries kept the Hutus as slaves. I write about this in more detail in my book. She would not listen, I think she was brainwashed, I can however understand that at that time we had this genocide in our heads, which everyone talked about, but it is also true that we spoke with people who explained to us what the conditions were before the RPF invasion.

From New York a friend sent me a history book on Rwanda, and at a certain point you see photos: there is one taken of Baudouin, the Belgian king, at just 22 years old, as soon as he was elected king, as he visited the colonies, Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. You see this tall, handsome Baudouin, always dressed in white, and then there are these very tall Tutsi leaders next to him, with cloaks full of feathers of various colors and there on the right, sitting on the ground, dressed in banana leaves are the Hutus. The image speaks for itself. 

Nicoletta Fagiolo: Why did the Rwandans flee to Zaire? 

Lino Bordin: It was the war that made them flee Rwanda. Everyone knew that this genocide could happen and they made it happen because. Kagame and company had to get rid of many Rwandans who otherwise could create problems of power-sharing. So, they sacrificed all those who would be killed.

Nicoletta Fagiolo: United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) force commander Roméo Dallaire or second in command Luc Marshal or even Belgian journalist Colette Braeckman have all said this, that the RPF was willing to sacrifice the Tutsis of the interior to come to power. 

Lino Bordin: Not only, Kagame on some occasions told foreign soldiers "you must not intervene, this is an internal problem that we must solve,.” But it had already been decided beforehand in my opinion.. 

Cover-up of a genocide

Nicoletta Fagiolo: Why did UNHCR not take a position, it was an international war, if there was an invasion…

Lino Bordin: Since it was not supposed to be known that the Tutsis had invaded from Rwanda, but that it was a guerrilla movement born from the Banyamulenge as they were discriminated against, that was the official narrative…

Lino Bordin: In fact, when we crossed the border and entered Rwanda and they sent us to Nairobi, one of the reasons they didn’t want us to talk to journalists is because they didn’t want us to say that we had seen the Rwandan Tutsi army enter the camps and do what they did…

Nicoletta Fagiolo: Have you witness another such crisis where refugee camps are bombed and attacked in this way?

Lino Bordin: I have never witnessed in my long 30-year career with the United Nations where I was always in refugee camps my whole life, that there were camps attacked in this way. Small vicissitudes between refugees and local populations, I have seen those, a bit in Somalia, not in Angola, but nothing comparable to what happened there, absolutely not. 

Nicoletta Fagiolo: And UN High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata didn’t say anything?

Lino Bordin: I don’t know what they said in Geneva, because I was in the middle of the war in Bukavu..

Nicoletta Fagiolo: When you returned to Zaire fromUganda what did you find? 

Lino Bordin: The camps were all empty, there was no one left in the camps. I remember when I saw Mugunga … ehhhhh … and everyone was talking about all the massacres that had taken place and about those who had fled and were dying in the forest. There was a persecution against Hutu men, women and children, they didn't distinguish who they targeted. Was it not enough that they were dying? they killed everyone in their way and in my opinion in Tingi Tingi 200-300,000 people died. 

Filippo Grandi ( a UNHCR staff member) who was there told me that at a certain point they were banned from going to the camps. The fleeing refugees arrived in Tingi Tingi, it was a mess, there was also a hospital with a few thousand people. Filippo told me: “Look, the new authorities told us that nobody has to go to the camp to take care of anything because they would so, the next day the hospital had completely disappeared, there was nothing left, no tents, no sick people, nothing, they massacred them all.” How many died in the river because between the weapons and the river, many chose the river; there was the train, I don’t know how many they massacred on that train that arrived in Tingi Tingi, they massacred them all, there were those who escaped from the windows, those who threw themselves into the river…ehhh

Nicoletta Fagiolo: In Bukavu you received death threats after a report you wrote that denounced the Tutsi-led Rwandan army massacres in Zaire?

Lino Bordin: This also surprised me a lot because I had sent a confidential report to Sérgio Vieira de Mello who was our special envoy for the Great Lakes region as well as to the person in charge of that part of Africa.

We are in Bukavu for the reconstruction of the area and to fix up the camps where the refugees had been living, and make them usable for the local population, fix what had been destroyed and we were the only United Nations agency already present, the first to arrive after the war, it was me and twelve female colleagues, two from New Zealand and there was also the representative of the World Food Program who had arrived, an Eritrean I remember, and that's it, just us. 

And one evening the governor calls me and insists on the phone. Unfortunately, I had arrived home from the office, a good half hour, three quarters of an hour and I was in the bathroom and couldn't hear the phone. My secretary came from downstairs and told me "there's the governor who's desperately looking for you," her exact words. I left dressed in a sports suit, since he was a friend. I got to the governorate and found a situation that I absolutely didn't expect: the office was full of Rwandan Tutsi soldiers, two meters tall, soldiers, generals with sequins, medals, weapons and hand grenades and in the governor's living room there were four guys who seemed to be managing the situation a bit, four Africans. The governor who, although he was African, was almost pale, I think he was more afraid than I was, poor thing, he was terribly sorry. 

The deputy, on the other hand, who was one of those tough Rwandans, tall, thin, looked down on me, and said "our movement is a movement that still se recherche (is searching itself in French) and anything can happen to you here, who will come looking for you, who will come looking for you in the forest to find out who eliminated you.” I was also afraid, and I was sitting there in this chair with these four who were insulting me and they told me: "Luckily the English ambassador was able to show us your confidential report on the killings that our soldiers are carying out in the forest, but did you see this? Did you personally see this? " I said: “”Personally, no, not directly, but passing through the villages, the Congolese villagers took me to see where the mass graves are and there are identity cards and documents coming up from the ground, you could see that the earth had been moved, and the Congolese were forced by the Tutsi military to dig and bury all these corpses. 

And I saw this, I was there. Not only that, then there were all those who told me what was happening in the forests. And in the forests, what they told me, horrible things were happening. They were cutting off a piece of his leg, an arm… I heard things like that every day, continuously and then these four started saying “So you, the next reports, before sending them to Geneva, will have to be shared with us, with the governorate”, and I said, “we are following the international laws that the governments have signed. And we are still with the official Congolese government for the moment, they signed the agreements,” They didn’t care. So, I said okay we will try to let you know, anyway. And I said to myself you know Africans, let them vent, then you will see little by little how to recover. To tell you the truth around midnight we all went to a restaurant that they had opened to eat something as friends. It was, I don't know, a few years later that the tall, thin one (not the governor), the one who had studied in South Africa, a Rwandan, who then became the Minister of Justice in Kinshasa with the new Kabila government, who one day met Filippo Grandi and told him, and Filippo Grandi referred this to me: "we treated one of your fellow countrymen very badly in Bukavu," the Rwandan even wrote this anecdote in a book.

Nicoletta Fagiolo: But you say that the orders came from England, how do you make this connection? 

Lino Bordin: Because the Americans and the English were united in planning everything that was organized. When we say that Rwanda was helped, it was helped by America and England. And in my opinion in this specific case, since this colleague of mine in Geneva had contacts with the English and American embassies in Kigali, once they received the text they felt obliged to warn the new government barely installed in Goma, just two months old.

Nicoletta Fagiolo: And why all this silence, all these years, even by those like the United Nations who were on the ground and could denounce these massacres on the part of the RPF, at least at that time, the authorities in Geneva could make statements. 

Lino Bordin: I don't want to say something stupid, but in my opinion the more they killed the happier everyone was...this was sort of my impression, and no one really wanted to take a stance against Rwanda, which meant also being against the United States and Great Britain. 

I arrived in Italy and the Ministry of the Interior called me and told me "there are several Congolese who come and ask for political asylum, can you explain to us what happened, you who were there in that region.” So, I organize myself, a nice large map and some smaller maps ... I arrive and there were about 10 officials, from the Ministry of the Interior and Foreign Affairs, I begin to explain .. I started to cry, I couldn't stop anymore ... I ran to the bathroom. It still overwhelms me, .. it was a big moment

Nicoletta Fagiolo: And when you came back to Zaire how many months did you stay?

Lino Bordin: I stayed 8 months before I went to Kurdistan in Iraq.

The UNHCR sent several officials, because at that point they were trying to track down the refugees lost in the forests to try to understand which were the génocidaires and which were not. 

I had information because the refugees spoke to me or a colleague of mine who would tell me in Kibeho this and this happened. Otherwise when we were in the office having meetings, even when we discussed the reasons why these refugees didn't want to go back, aster were human rights problems in Rwanda... No, No, They didn't want to listen...

Nicoletta Fagiolo: And yet it's part of non-refoulement, right? 

Lino Bordin: The pressure that was put on Geneva to get them to return to Rwanda at all costs was great... no one stood up for the Hutu refugees.

Then we also went to Rwanda to have meetings with the new Tutsi leaders of Rwanda and there was a difficulty in speaking with them that you can't imagine, they were so severe, serious and it was as if they considered us accomplices of the Hutus who were in the camps. In fact, we even held a seminar in Kigali at the Hotel Milles Collins to teach us how to manage relations with the new Rwandan authorities.

Nicoletta Fagiolo: And who organized this?

Lino Bordin: UNHCR

Nicoletta Fagiolo: And what was addressed?

Lino Bordin: Being able to talk and make them understand our positions without making them angry. Because they really hated us, and I saw it in the way they looked at us, because they thought we were in agreement with the Hutus. Obviously, our task was to save these Hutus and help these refugees, then what was political is another thing, it didn’t concern us.

Take the Americans, they contributed 40%, or they gave, but I still think it is so today, to the UNHCR budget and thus we always had an American number two, CIA obviously. The Americans reported everything to their embassies, it was difficult to understand who was from the CIA and who wasn't. 

I wrote another report when I was in Bukavu and this too was received badly in Geneva. They didn't want to know. I was alone. 

At first, I was surprised that there was such a strong implication from both the Americans and the British and I also said to myself ,who knows where these people got this information, but then little by little I started to get reports not only from the refugees, but also from the embassies that came to visit and who told us outright, carrement. When the American ambassador came it was clear that they were implicated from what they said, "we must put an end to this story, they (the refugees) cost too much, they are dangerous for Rwanda"...

NOTES 

[i] Judi Rever, Kibeho: A Story of Flesh and Blood, Foreign Policy Journal, 27 April, 2015.

[ii] UNHCR Goma Head of Office Joel Boutroue underlines this in the study Missed Opportunities: The Role of the International Community in the Return of the Rwandan Refugees from Eastern Zaire, July 1994 - December, 1998.

[iii] Augustin Bizimungu was appointed chief of staff of the army on 16 April 1994 and promoted to the rank of major general.