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Rwandan crisis

Resolution number
20
Whereas
  1. The crisis in Rwanda persists and a special workshop on the subject was requested at the CCR conference;
  2. The genocide and massacres which began on April 6 have to date caused 500,000 victims and displaced more than 2,000,000 people and the numbers are continuing to grow;
  3. Inordinate numbers of refugees are pouring into the countries neighbouring Rwanda;
  4. The people of Rwanda are suffering a humanitarian tragedy and a social and economic crisis without historical precedent;
  5. The UN forces left Rwanda just as the genocide was launched, leaving the civilian population at risk, thus encouraging the army and the militia to massacre and calling into question their credibility
  6. There is considerable media misinformation suggesting that the war in Rwanda is ethnic, while in fact it is political;
Therefore be it resolved

That the CCR:

  1. Urge the government of Canada to:
    1. support our request for an impartial international or regional inquiry into the events which led to the genocide of the Rwandan people;
    2. support appropriate measures to ensure that following such an inquiry those responsible for the massacres are judged and punished, whether in Rwanda, here or in another country;
    3. support appropriate measures to establish a democratic government of national unity and to ensure respect for human rights, in the spirit of the Arusha Accord;
    4. continue its generous humanitarian aid to the Rwandan people;
    5. study and discuss the problem of how the local personnel employed by Canadian organizations or government were abandonned when Canadian expatriates were evacuated, in order to ensure that such a situation does not happen again;
    6. reject the imposition of conditions on the participation of Canadian forces in the UN troops, according to which 5,500 troops are to be brought together in Rwanda;
    7. implement special measures with simple and clear criteria to offer protection in Canada for those with family or other links with Canadians of Rwandan origin and to refuse visas and landing to previously identified criminals;
    8. cease all non-justified removals of Rwandans in Canada;
  2. Request its members to educate the Canadian public on the origins as well as the solutions to the current crisis in Rwanda;
  3. Request the Canadian government to finalize an urgent special procedure to collect unaccompanied orphaned minors whose sole remaining relatives are in Canada; i.e. Canadians of Rwandan origin whatever their eligibility for existing sponsorship programmes (humanitarian cases).
Working Group
Overseas Protection and Resettlement