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Rwanda: Rebuilding a country
By Cecilia Locmant, ICFTU Online, 23 November 1999
Brussels, November 23, 1999 (ICFTU OnLine): Before
becoming a trade unionist, young Rwandan Sylvestre Nyilinkwaya worked
for a year for UNICEF. He was part of a team of lawyers sent out by
the international organisation to defend women and children in
conflict with the law. He explains how, with just his salary to live
on, he, like several other colleagues, had to wait several months to
be paid. In its report, Human Rights Watch also refers to this type of
difficulty in order to explain the constant "failures" of the
Arusha International Tribunal. Sylvestre Nylinkwaya: "After the
massacres, the army picked up everyone wandering around on the streets
and put them into prison, with no distinction of age. My work was to
meet these prisoners, to identify them, and try to place the children,
who at times were no older than seven, in reeducation centres. Two or
three months before the end of my contract, things began to go
wrong. The salaries of my colleagues and myself were no longer paid,
for no apparent reason. I had to wait 5 months after the end of my
contract to receive my fees, and all my representations to UNICEF were
of no avail. The new justice minister was blocking the dossier, and I
never received any explanation for these delays." Today, Sylvestre
Nyilinkwaya, now the deputy secretary of the CESTRARs judicial
staff trade union, and also in charge of the ICFTU young peoples
campaign (see page??). ) for ORAF, is much more optimistic about his
countrys future. His trade union regularly meets with young
people in the reeducation centres. For him, these young people express
their desire to rebuild. In the particular context of Rwanda, CESTRAR
has therefore made defending the youngest workers one of its
priorities. Another young CESTRAR trade unionist, Dominique
Habiyaremye, explains : "Many children work today in
Rwanda. After the war, they have become heads of families or live
alone in the street. There are 50,000 such children in Kigali. Right
now there is no political structure to prevent their being
exploited. In our trade union, when we were consulted by the
transition assembly as part of the revision of the labour code, we
pleaded that the minimum working age be set at 14 and not 13. We are
also trying to press the government to introduce teaching
programmes. As part of the campaign, finally, we have training
activities in each prefecture. Everything is still embryonic, but the
young people here want to rebuild what has been destroyed."
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