After the 1994 genocide and collapse of the health system, Rwanda initiated major social and health reforms in order to reduce child mortality and health inequities in accordance with the Millennium Development Goals. The aim of this thesis was to assess trends in under-five mortality (U5M) and equity in child survival, to study social barriers for improved perinatal and neonatal survival, and to evaluate Helping Babies Breathe (HBB), a newborn resuscitation program. In paper I we analysed trends and social inequities in child mortality 1990−2010, using data from national Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in 2000, 2005, and 2010. The following papers were based on hospital studies in the capital of Rwanda. In paper II we explored social inequities in perinatal mortality. Using a perinatal audit approach, paper III assessed factors related to the three delays, which preceded perinatal deaths, and estimates were made of potentially avoidable deaths. Paper IV evaluated knowledge and skills gained and retained by health workers after training in HBB. Under-five mortality declined from the peak of 238 deaths per 1000 live births (95% CI 226 to 251) in 1994 to 65 deaths per 1000 live births (95% CI 61 to 70) in 2010 and concurred with decreased social gaps in child and neonatal survival between rural and urban areas and household wealth groups. Children born to women with no education still had significantly higher under-five mortality. Neonatal mortality also decreased but at a slower rate as compared to infant and U5M. Maternal rural residence or having no health insurance were linked to increased risk of perinatal death. Neither maternal education nor household wealth was associated with perinatal mortality risks. Lack of recognition of pregnancy danger signs and intrapartum-related suboptimal care were major contributors to perinatal deaths, whereof one half was estimated to be potentially avoidable. Knowledge significantly improved after training in HBB. This knowledge was sustained for at least 3 months following training whereas practical skills had declined. These results highlight the need for strengthening coverage of lifesaving interventions giving priority to underserved groups for improved child survival at community as well as at hospital levels.

<p>Corruption is a serious problem which has many negative impacts on sustainable economic development globally. The clandestine nature of corruption makes it difficult to detect. Hence, efforts to combat corruption successfully demand comprehensive anti-corruption legislation, strong powers, as well as special investigative techniques and strategies. An effective anti-corruption regime requires a comprehensive anti-corruption legal framework which not only punishes all forms of corruption but also capacitates anti-corruption institutions. A strong anti-corruption agency is a&nbsp / crucial requirement and a necessary part of a country&rsquo / s anti-corruption strategy. The failure or the success of an anti-corruption agency depends on a variety of factors, such as powers and means to detect, investigate and prosecute corruption and related offences. The lack of trained staff, as well as the lack of adequate material resources, also affects the effectiveness of an anti-corruption agency. The anti-corruption agencies covered by this research are not empowered or resourced sufficiently, which may result in their ineffectiveness. This paper provides a set of recommendations in respect of the powers and strategies needed for a successful anti-corruption agency.</p>

Kenya like many other countries offers asylum to refugees in fulfillment of the provisions of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention as well as the 1969 OAU Refugee Convention. The country, with the assistance of UNHCR, confers refugee status on refugees who meet the qualifications stated by the two treaties as well as the Refugee Act 2006. Rwandan refugees make up part of the refugee community in Kenya. Though refugee status was created to enhance refugee protection in countries of asylum, it was never intended to last a lifetime. The United Nations envisioned an end to refugee status when the reasons for flight as well as persecution no longer continued to exist. The cessation clause marks the end of refugee status and thus facilitates re-establishment in the country of origin. This study endeavours to explore the impact that the cessation clause will have on Rwandan refugees residing in Kenya specifically based on the widespread concern about the human rights situation in Rwanda. There is accordingly a need to explore the nature of the cessation clause, the reasons for its creation and further the qualifications entailed in its application. After understanding what the cessation clause is, there is the need to understand the genesis of Rwandan refugees. This will enhance the understanding of why Rwandan refugees continue to reside in Kenya even after the end of the Rwandan conflict. The study will then expound on the reasons for and against invocation of a cessation clause to provide an analysis of whether the country is indeed safe for return. To enhance this analysis, the study will provide a comparative study with Liberia and Angola, which recently implemented cessation clauses. Through this comparative assessment, the study will seek to ascertain the viability of the concerns raised in reference to Rwanda and further speculate on the outcome of the cessation clause pertaining to the concerns raised. This study will therefore be able to advise on whether the cessation clause applies to Rwandan refugees and thereafter offer recommendations as to whether implementation in the Rwandan context is feasible. It will also endeavor to provide an analysis of whether there is a need to amend the invocation procedure with regard to cessation clauses in general. / Thesis (LL.M.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2013.

This thesis focuses on the perceptions and experiences of Rwandan children living in rural child headed households regarding malaria, and how these perceptions and experiences compare to their other health concerns. Despite the attention given to malaria by the international community and the Rwandan government, and the numerous studies that have documented the material and socioeconomic poverty that characterizes the lives of child headed households, Rwandan children’s perspectives regarding their health have rarely been elicited. Through the use of drawing activities and semi-structured interviews with 37 children between the ages of six to eighteen years, living in 14 child headed households, I explore how poverty shapes their understandings, experiences and responses to malaria, and the variation in these perceptions and experiences based on age and gender. Malaria, although a concern for the children, is simply one of many challenges they face in a context characterised by poverty, and structured risk to poor health outcomes. These barriers, along with the other health concerns expressed by the children, receive little attention from informal and organised networks of support, which results in the children bearing a disproportionate burden of social suffering. Insight into structural violence is gained through interviews with NGOs who have or are currently working with child headed households. These interviews illustrate how larger socio-political and economic forces shape the lived reality of the children. Additionally, interviews with community members who offer support to the children illustrate how social ideologies affect local level perceptions and responses to child headed households.

Univ., Diss.--Heidelberg, 2003. / Literaturverzeichnis S. [293] - 318.

This thesis offers an account of children's lived experiences in Rwanda (1930s-2016) in four key domains: kinship, education, economic transitions, and marriage. Based on historical and ethnographic fieldwork in rural and urban Rwanda from 2012 to 2014, this work explores how three generations of young people have experienced and navigated childhood and coming of age at the interface of 'traditional' and 'modern' institutional systems. Rather than focusing narrowly on 'crisis' childhoods, individual agency, or exogenous forces, as studies of young Africans and social change tend to, this work examines young people's 'everyday' actions - intentional and unintentional, individual and collective, compliant and non-compliant - and locates them within their broader historical, relational, and institutional environment. By focusing on the intensely reproductive period of childhood and coming of age, on Rwanda's unexceptional majority rather than its exceptionally vulnerable minority, and on children's everyday actions rather than the strategic actions of elites, this thesis shows us how children shape the institutions of childhood and marriage and, in so doing, influence how society is reproduced and changed. Theoretically, this thesis explains how children and their institutional environment are mutually constituting: it examines how and why young people experience rapid change and structural violence differently and it traces how they reproduce and change these structural conditions as they engage with institutional mechanisms in (un)intended ways. The research reveals that children in central Rwanda navigate constraints and opportunities by drawing on established kinship relationships and institutions while also opportunistically engaging with modern institutions and their actors. However, in this context of 'institutional multiplicity', traditional and modern institutional systems each need Rwanda's young majority to reproduce their institutions over others', and as intended, to achieve their power-distributional goals. This makes children's actions particularly consequential and demands that we redefine what political action - and political actors - look like.

The study investigates the interface between the variables - language attitude and language use in a development context, and attempts to determine the contribution of language to Rwanda's post-conflict development, reconstruction and reconciliation. It examines the language attitudes and language use patterns of 53 students from Rwanda's public universities focusing on how students, who are all Rwandan citizens, view the role of Kinyarwanda, French, English and Kiswahili languages in twelve core areas of post-conflict development. Although post-conflict development is socio-economic, previous historical and political factors affecting Rwanda's violent past play a role as new forms of linguistic categorization - Anglophone and Francophone - emerge which may be used to camouflage previous ethnic categorizations that have had disastrous effects in Rwanda. Further, social categorizations laden with salient features of linguistic identity may influence the implementation of the post-conflict development programmes, and also affect the pace and pattern of reconciliation in Rwanda. Conclusions are based on eclectic sources: quantitative, qualitative, historical and participatory, with patterns of analysis established from secondary and historical data. The study is also grounded in the Communication Accommodation Theory that rests on issues of divergence and convergence during interaction where emerging language identities dovetail with language attitudes and language use, resulting in an interface that influences the implementation of Rwanda's post-conflict development programmes. Additionally, it is argued that the African languages such as Kinyarwanda and Kiswahili, should be considered as vehicles for Rwanda's post-conflict development, although Kinyarwanda, the home language, has in the past really not served an intranational unifying function. On the other hand, Kiswahili, unlike Kinyarwanda, has no divisive myths and identities that would inhibit post-conflict development; it is an important language in the East and Central African region where post-conflict Rwanda will play a positive and active role, and would be a language to be positively developed. / African Languages / D.Litt et Phil. (African Languages)

The principal questions addressed in this portfolio of eleven publications concern the reforms to French justice at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries. The portfolio is accompanied by a supporting statement explaining the genesis and chronology of the portfolio, its originality and the nature of the submission's distinct contribution to knowledge. The thesis questions whether the reforms protect the rights of the defence adequately. It considers how the French state views its responsibility to key figures in criminal justice, be they suspected and convicted criminals, the victims of offences or the professionals who are prosecuting the offences. It reflects upon the role of the examining magistrate, the delicate relationship between justice, politics and the media, breaches of confidentiality and the catastrophic conditions in which suspects and prisoners are detained in French prisons. It then extends its scope to a case study of the prosecution of violent crimes before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and discovers significant flaws in procedures even at international levels. In concluding, it asks whether, given the challenges facing the French criminal justice system, French courts are adequately equipped to assure justice when suspects charged with the most serious international crimes appear before them under the principle of universal jurisdiction. The research, carried out over a number of years, relies predominantly on an analysis of French-language sources and represents a unique contribution to the understanding and knowledge of French justice for an English-speaking public at the turn of the twenty-first century.

From long ago, rivers have always sustained livelihoods of the peoples through the utilisation of different natural resources available in the basin. All over the world, many rivers have been dammed in the spirit of performing various purposes: agricultural irrigation, domestic water supply and power generation or flood control. By the year 2001, the World Commission on Dams brought into focus the debate on damrelated impacts on local economies, societal cultures, livelihoods security and environmental conservation. The outcome of the World Commission on Dams consultation strongly recommended the governments to involve all stakeholders to address appropriately all issues associated with dams. The overall focus of this master thesis is the projected Rusumo Falls dam in the Kagera River Basin (East Africa). Based on literature documentation completed by on-ground observations and qualitative interviews at Rusumo, various issues connected with the dam are presented. In the first part, the Kagera River Basin background information is provided. It gives an overview of the physical and human characteristics of the Kagera watershed and subcatchments. A brief history and socio-economic indicators are given to enlighten the outsiders about the development challenges of the riparian countries of Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. Regional frameworks for the development and management of Kagera Basin natural resources are presented: The Kagera Basin Organisation and the Nile Basin Initiative. Section two analyses the likely social problems around the Rusumo Hydro Electric Project resulting from the land issue and the electricity needs and posing a dilemma for the governments committed to reverse the poverty and developing the economies. Benefits and drawbacks of the dam as perceived by the beneficiaries are thoroughly listed. Based on the overwhelming supports from the Rusumo people, the governments of Burundi, Rwanda and Tanzania together with the international community, a public participation scenario is suggested in the last chapter. It encourages the governments to come together with all interested groups and the affected people of Rusumo and address any matters associated to the dam management process. The conclusion of this study draws some strategies and methods to ensure full popular participation in the dam management. It provides some ways to involve all stakeholders to address the related issues. As the Rusumo people perceptions of the dam possible effects might not be realistic, the popular participation can offer them a good opportunity to handle socio-economic problems such as the land issue, the economy restructure and the nature conservation. In this case study, the government of Rwanda is therefore responsible for the establishment of platforms for a broad popular consultation.

Magister Legum - LLM / Corruption is a serious problem which has many negative impacts on sustainable economic development globally. The clandestine nature of corruption makes it difficult to detect. Hence, efforts to combat corruption successfully demand comprehensive anti-corruption legislation, strong powers, as well as special investigative techniques and strategies. An effective anti-corruption regime requires a comprehensive anti-corruption legal framework which not only punishes all forms of corruption but also capacitates anti-corruption institutions. A strong anti-corruption agency is a crucial requirement and a necessary part of a country's anti-corruption strategy. The failure or the success of an anti-corruption agency depends on a variety of factors, such as powers and means to detect, investigate and prosecute corruption and related offences. The lack of trained staff, as well as the lack of adequate material resources, also affects the effectiveness of an anti-corruption agency. The anti-corruption agencies covered by this research are not empowered or resourced sufficiently, which may result in their ineffectiveness. This paper provides a set of recommendations in respect of the powers and strategies needed for a successful anti-corruption agency. / South Africa