Our event this week in Bujumbura (introduced in my previous blog) is split into two parts. Special UN Envoy Mary Robinson’s consultation and mobilisation in support of the Framework of Hope will be followed by a Great Lakes Regional Conference on United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 –…
The apparently never ending cycles of violence in and around the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo have been followed (always ‘followed’ unfortunately) by cycles of international interest that have failed to deliver change and build a permanent peace. Can the latest international effort really be different? Can we dare to hope for…
One of the saddest places on earth is the Kigali Genocide Memorial managed by the Aegis Trust. Here, 250,000 or so victims of the Rwanda genocide in 1994 are buried together, alongside an exhibition and permanent memorial to their memory. A flame is lit each year by President Kagame to burn at the entrance as…
On my previous visits to Rwanda over recent years, I have either been supporting specific projects managed by the Hunter or Clinton Foundations, or by other international NGO’s, or meeting the President to discuss global challenges: education, conflict, development. So Friday 24 May, the first full day of our APPG visit was particularly interesting. Meeting…
When the Coalition came into power it set the Department of International Development (DFID) a target of allocating 30% of the UK’s bilateral official development assistance (the term devised by the OECD and its member countries to determine whether funding or other support counts as aid or not) by 2014-15. In many ways this was…
