State of the World's Minorities 2007 - Rwanda

During 2006, the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) government continued to pursue policies of playing down ethnicity as a means of overcoming the minority's endangerment – all too evident in the 1994 genocide that claimed an estimated 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu victims at the hands of Hutu nationalists. Rwanda's population consists of 85 per cent Hutu, 14 per cent Tutsi, and 1 per cent Twa.

Critics claim that its bans on 'divisive' parties and organizations are designed to serve RPF power interests. In February 2006, Rwanda's first post-genocide president, Pasteur Bizimungu – a Hutu – lost an appeal against his 2004 conviction for 'criminal association' in his attempt to form a rival party in 2002. Human Rights Watch documented flaws in his first-instance trial.

In the course 2006, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) continued to hear top-tier genocide cases, while Rwanda's traditional gacaca courts continued to try large numbers of less prominent cases. In January 2007, the Rwandan cabinet voted to abolish the death penalty. If approved by parliament, the move will allow countries which object to the death penalty to extradite genocide suspects back to Rwanda. Abolition of the death penalty was also a prerequisite for the transfer of some ICTR cases to Rwanda's national court system. The ICTR prosecutor still hadn't taken up serious allegations of war crimes committed by the RPF's predecessor, the Rwandan Patriotic Army, during the genocide. The prosecutor faced the implicit threat that if he did so the government would rescind all cooperation with the tribunal.

The indigenous Twa people of Rwanda, numbering an estimated 25,000–30,000, remain on society's margins, disadvantaged in education, health care and land rights. The government of Rwanda has threatened to cut off all assistance to the Twa and their organizations if they continue to consider themselves as a distinct people.