The Whips have agreed that considerable reference can be made to Rwanda during this debate.
I am glad that it has been possible to find time to hold this debate. Issues relating to the developing world arouse considerable public interest in Ireland and while we often refer to specific aspects at Question Time and during Adjournment debates we do not often have set piece debates about the broader issues.
Debt and development are the themes of today's debate and are undoubtedly of crucial importance. They are important for the developing countries because so many of them have to carry a huge debt burden and the servicing of this places an enormous strain on their resources. They are also important for the better off countries because the debt issue is seen by the Third World as a yardstick by which they will measure the promises of those who claim to have their interests at heart.
I am sure that Deputies will understand if I start my contribution by referring to Rwanda. For the past few days I have been travelling in a region where the most basic issue of all, the question of life and death, was uppermost in people's minds as they fled from scenes of unprecedented horror. Everyone is familiar by now with the ever-worsening catalogue of murder and torture which is emerging from Rwanda. What I found especially chilling were the individual stories I heard, in plain, unvarnished language, in the refugee camps on the borders of Tanzania and Rwanda. Those stories, as a journalist who accompanied me has reported, held the ring of truth. They were only one side of the story and only a small part of that one side but they brought home to me the terrible reality of what is happening in Rwanda more forcibly than any lists of facts or figures.
I went to Rwanda in response to the grave concern felt by the Government and myself at the horror unfolding there to express the outrage of the Irish people at the appalling killings of innocent men, women and children. If I tell Deputies that the number of letters about Rwanda coming into the Department of Foreign Affairs runs into thousands they will get a measure of the strength of feeling that exists about this issue. The theme of the letters is the same: shock and grief at the scale of the killings, coupled with a strong desire for the international community to do something to prevent the toll getting any greater.
My primary objective was to look and listen and learn at first hand from those at the scene. I was also conscious that the Irish aid personnel were, once again, the first to arrive to give help to the refugees fleeing the conflict. I wanted to demonstrate my support for these courageous young men and women of whom we should all be proud. Finally, I wanted to consult the Governments of Uganda and Tanzania, the neighbouring countries so seriously affected by the Rwanda crisis. Both are priority countries under our aid programme and are, therefore, particularly deserving of our solidarity and support.
I met a very wide range of people during the three days I spent in the region. In Tanzania I spoke at length by phone to the Prime Minister, Mr. John Malacela, and met the Deputy Prime Minister for talks at which he outlined Tanzania's role as facilitator in the Arusha peace process and the heavy burden that the Rwandan crisis is imposing on Tanzania.
I then visited the area most affected by the crisis, Kagera district, which borders Rwanda. I was met by the district commissioner who accompanied me on visits to some of the refugee camps.
A month ago there was nothing at Benaco, which now has the largest concentration of population in Tanzania after Dar es Salaam, and the numbers are still growing. Benaco which is now described as the second largest city in Tanzania, made up of a vast sea of humanity, huddled together around distribution centres for food, blankets and hastily improvised latrines. Although the camp is very well run by the UNHCR and non-government organisations, it is only a short term answer to a huge problem. Conditions at the camp will almost certainly deteriorate especially if there is another influx of refugees, with a likely outbreak of epidemics such as cholera. I have been informed that hundreds of thousands of people are on the move at all times within Rwanda.
The UN has given Concern responsibility for the management of one-third of this vast encampment and new camps are being built nearby in an attempt to disperse the present concentration of more than 250,000 people in tents over an area of only four square kilometres.
I also visited the Karagwe area and a camp at Chapalisi where GOAL is active. Even though there are only about 16,000 refugees, they are arriving in a much poorer state than the refugees at Benaco, as many of them have walked from the far interior of Rwanda on the borders with Zaire. Many of them are arriving singly and there is a large number of unaccompanied minors. Their living conditions are truly miserable and GOAL hopes to resettle them, by arrangement with the Tanzanian authorities and the UNHCR, in a better pre-prepared camp.
Wherever I went I was greatly struck by the reliance that international agencies such as the UNHCR place on Irish agencies like Concern and GOAL, which are as crucial to the aid effort as widely respected organisations such as Medecins sans Frontieres and Oxfam. GOAL and especially Concern have been allocated a pivotal role in camp management and the distribution of food and other supplies by the UNHCR. They are facing an appalling human problem. Refugees are arriving on every trail open from the border. All of the camps are growing every day and there are huge queues of new arrivals — up to 2,000 every day — waiting to be registered and given their first rations and blankets.
I met aid workers from Concern, GOAL, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the UNHCR and other agencies at the camps and at meetings in Karagwe and Bukoba, as well as in Kampala and Nairobi. They, and the refugees and hospital patients I met in Karagwe, gave the most horrific accounts of the atrocities that had been committed across the border in Rwanda. The agencies and missionaries whom I met in Kampala have been involved in the recovery and burial of bodies that have been washed into Lake Victoria. They described the brutal ways these people had been killed and outlined how the economy around the lake had been thrown into disarray as local people were refusing to eat fish, part of their staple diet, and many contracts for fish exports had been cancelled.
During my short visit to Kampala I held discussions on the Rwanda crisis with the Ugandan Foreign Minister, representatives of the Rwanda Popular Front and the Burundi Ambassador. I also met the Minister for Finance and Economic Planning in connection with the Technical Co-operation Agreement which we are planning to sign in late summer and which will give Uganda priority country status for Irish aid.
In Nairobi I met the Deputy Resident Representative of UNAMIR who described the chaos that is reigning inside Rwanda, especially in areas under Government control and the difficulty that UNAMIR is encountering in getting the agreement of the warring parties to its deployment. I also met the Deputy Resident Representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross who gave a most disturbing account of mass violence and of the extremely dangerous conditions under which the ICRC has to operate.
At the Rwandan-Tanzanian border, I crossed the Rumoso bridge over the Kagera river. On the Rwandan side of the border, I met with two senior military personnel from the RPF. The gruesome sight of corpses slapping against the rocks below was a ghastly reminder that the genocide had not yet come to an end.
In Kampala I met Mr. Seth Sendashonga, a member of the RPF Executive Committee, who was accompanied by a senior member of the RPF. He told me how the RPF became involved in the fighting after 6 April with the intention of stopping the massacres against those, mainly Tutsis, who did not support the hardline Government forces. The massacres, he claimed, were one-sided, Government-organised, against civilians, and not simply tribal or ethnic killings. I shall have more to say about this later.
A draft ceasefire had been agreed, but signs of goodwill, such as the freeing of people trapped in Kigali, would first be necessary. If this were to happen the prospects of peace would be improved.
I spoke to him of the accounts I had received from some Hutu refugees in the camps of atrocities committeed in named villages against them by the RPF. He undertook to investigate these as a matter of urgency. He referred to the encouragement by the international community for both sides to enter into talks and stated that the RPF was not prepared to negotiate with the "so called" Government, though they would talk with the Government military forces.
On a more hopeful note, Mr. Sendashonga said that the Arusha accord was still a valid document and that in the spirit of that agreement the possibility of a broad-based Government remained on the agenda.
In meetings I had with the Tanzanian Deputy-Prime Minister, Mr. Mrema, the Uganda Foreign Minister, Mr. Ssemogerere, and others, I emphasised that Ireland condemned in strongest terms all violations of human rights in Rwanda in the past seven weeks, including the massacres of the Tutsi tribe. There could be no justification for such violations. We were making a strong appeal for an end to the killing of civilians and called for both parties in the conflict to cease fighting. An end to the massacre and a ceasefire were a necessary means to commencing negotiations and to reconciliation in the spirit of the Arusha accord.
With the Foreign Minister of Uganda and the RPF, I raised the accounts given to me by Hutu refugees in the refugee camps I visited. They told me of atrocities committed on them and their families by the RPF in Rwanda. As I have said, we have concentrated in this debate on the Rwandan Government forces' atrocities and the genocide which have wiped out, we believe, up to half a million mainly Tutsi people. It was a very disturbing development to hear of RPF atrocities of a similar nature. These were accounts from men and women of the most horrific events. One women spoke of her husband and other men being tied up, being placed in a house, or their home and the building being burned; she managed to hide. Another man talked of the RPF coming to a village, calling the men together for a meeting. Their hands were tied, they were ordered to lie face down, hit on the back of the head by an instument called an unfuni, with one end of a tringle sharpeded. These men were not just beaten but shot. These are the kinds of atrocities of which we heard in these camps. The Foreign Minister said I was the first to mention such atrocities to him. He said he would investigate those accounts. I informed him that I would be reporting these accounts of human rights violations to the United Nations Commission for Human Rights in Geneva, giving people's names and referring to particular regions.
I would also mention that from soundings made the hopes of significant progress at the regional summit in Nairobi next Monday are not very great. It is essential that the international community give every support to the Heads of State of the neighbouring countries and to the OAU.
I would also add that the role of UNAMIR was seen as central by many, and that UNAMIR was considered to be doing very valuable work in very dangerous conditions. In this context I would strongly encourage the United States, which played such an important role in drafting the Security Council resolution on UNAMIR, to provide much needed assistance to speed up its early deployment. They are the best placed to offer the logistical and financial support which a situation as grave as this so urgently warrants. I am speaking here of the real situation obtaining.
The conclusions which I draw from the visit can be divided into two categories, humanitarian and political. On the humanitarian front, the refugee problem stands out. There will be a need for a massive programme of assistance for the foreseeable future. Half a million people have been displaced and, as I travelled around the region, scores more could be seen making their way over the fields with a few flimsy possessions on their backs.
The countries they are fleeing to are extremely poor themselves and the arrival of so many refugees is placing an intolerable burden on their economies. I can speak of Uganda and Tanzania: Zaire, Burundi and Kenya have also been hit. These neighbouring countries have been generous and hospitable, but they are feeling the strain. They urgently need our assistance and I will be calling on the European Union to do everything possible to help.
The situation inside Rwanda can only be guessed at. Judging by the stories coming from traumatised refugees the country is probably going through a living hell. Aid is beginning to make its way into Rwanda, both from the north and the south. As usual, Irish NGOs, in this case GOAL, Concern and Trócaire, are spearheading the effort. What seems certain is that once the full extent of the Rwanda tragedy is known, an enormous effort will be needed to render assistance.
Ireland has already assisted through £500,000 worth of emergency aid from the Government. On the basis of my visit and having regard to the fact that the needs are so great, the Government will respond positively to three requests: First, Prime Minister John Malecela of Tanzania made a direct appeal for water-pumping equipment for the rapidly expanding refugee camps at Ngora. Irish Aid will fund this through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; second, GOAL have an impressive camp management programme under way in Chapalisa which I visited. They have also established a base within Rwanda itself. I will make funds available for their projects; third. Concern has been appointed as one of the main coordinating agencies in the camps around Ngora and this will require additional financing to that already allocated to them. In addition, I am making available a grant of £25,000 to Concern right away for their operation to remove corpses from Lake Victoria for burial. Trócaire also intend to establish an emergency medical programme in Southern Rwanda with the Medical Missionaries of Mary and I am prepared to allocate funds to this project.
I should say that the sight of mutilated bodies in the river at Kusoma Falls is something I will never forget. It is almost beyond comprehension that human beings should have the last shred of dignity torn from them in this way.
I mentioned earlier the RPF atrocities. It is quite obvious we need to maintain a sense of balance. The vast majority of those killings were carried out by the Government forces. What I saw certainly respresents a glaring indication of man's inhumanity to man in its lowest possible form. One Concern aid worker, working on this project of taking the bodies from the river, spoke to me of how viciously the bodies were tortured and multilated. I could not repeat some accounts because they were too shocking; women and children were not spared. In fact one of the most upsetting reports from that Concern aid worker was of the taking of bodies of women from the river, in some cases one or two children having been tied to the mother. The Irish aid worker expressed his view that they were thrown into the river while still alive. That will give the House an indication of how serious and vicious is this war. I suppose one could say that what is happening is Rwanda is a repetition of what happened in Nazi Germany or in Pol Pot's Cambodia.
The new grants to which I have just referred will bring this Government's assistance to a figure of almost £1 million. This response reflects what I believe to be the extreme gravity of Rwandan crisis and, I am sure, will be welcomed by the public.
May I take this opportunity to ask the Irish people, who have been so generous in the past, to continue to contribute to the many agencies raising funds for Rwanda. I can bear personal testimony to the seriousness of the need and the excellent work the volunteer workers are doing. We all readily appreciate that always there is an element of danger of what is called "donor fatigue".
On the political front, the following are my conclusions. I shall be reporting to the European Union and will emphasise the importance of the very early deployment of the expanded UNAMIR peace-keeping force.
While the purpose of my visit primarily was to assess the position in Rwanda, it was also to express the great concern felt by the people of Ireland at the tragedy by going there. I shall say only that my presence there, as a representative of the international community, was greatly appreciated by all those I met — refugees. NGO officials, Government Ministers, the RPF and UNAMIR. My visit was especially appreciated by the Regional Commissioner who, two months ago, was simply administering his area, with a population of over one million people. Therefore, one can readily appreciate the new burdens falling on his shoulders trying to cope with this influx of people into the Tanzanian area.
Some progress is being made towards ending the massacres and bringing about a ceasefire. I was somewhat encouraged by my discussions with the RPF, UNAMIR, the ICRC. We shall do what we can to encourage the UN to deploy the enlarged UNAMIR force immediately. My major concern here is to protect the lives of the many thousands of civilians who remain in danger of being added to the genocide.
It is clear from my talks with Prime Minister Malecela of Tanzania and FM Ssemogerere of Uganda that the Heads of State in the regional summit have a crucial role to play and need substantial support from the international community.
Ireland co-sponsored the recent UN Commission on Human Rights resolution on Rwanda. This states that the:
...international community will exert every effort to bring those responsible for violations of human rights to justice, while affirming that the primary responsibility for bringing perpetrators to justice rests with national judicial systems.
Both the Ugandan Foreign Minister and the RPF representative stressed that action to bring the perpetrators of the genocide to justice would have to be taken. The Minister said that a national tribunal would have to be set up. In my view, it is important that action be taken quickly and those responsible for all violations of human rights be brought to justice. I shall forward to the Special Rapporteur of the Committee on Human Rights the accounts given to me in the refugee camps by Hutu people of the atrocities committed on them and theirs by the RPF.
From my discussions with the Ambassador of Burundi, it is clear that efforts to redress the situation in Rwanda must include preventing the conflict from spilling over into Burundi. From our discussions it is clear that there is a real danger of this happening.
It is appropriate to conclude my remarks on this visit by saying that the Tanzanian Government asked me to make representations on its behalf to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund about their financial difficulties — a matter very much related to today's debate. They are trying hard to address their balance of payments and debt problems and are implementing a structural adjustment programme.
However, they asked me to point out to the international financial institutions that the burden of coping with so many refugees was extremely onerous and that account should be taken of that. I undertook to support them on this and will be making my views known to the World Bank and the IMF.
The Tanzanian Government's concerns are shared by many leaders from the developing world. The need to integrate developing countries including the poorer among them into the world economy is an issue which calls for a new approach. Following the successful conclusion of the Uruguay Round there is a need for the new World Trade Organisation, on which we are agreed in Marrakesh should co-operate on a basis of equality with the IMF and the World Bank, to be given a more focused sense of direction. Surely it is necessary for a dialogue to begin at once between these three great economic organisations to consider how, together, they can improve the economic and trade prospects of developing countries.
I turn now to the debt problem, surely one of the major hurdles facing developing countries in their struggle to provide a long term viable framework for their economic and social development.
The background to our discussion is the excellent report which the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs has prepared and which provides much valuable information on the scale of the problem and suggests some possible options which could help resolve the debt burden for some of the most severely indebted countries. I pay tribute to their work and assure them that it is being given very serious consideration by the Government.
I should also like to acknowledge the work which the Debt and Development Coalition and OXFAM have carried out. Their campaign has done much to highlight the problem and to draw attention to the impact which debt is having on the hopes and aspirations of many of the peoples of the developing world.
It is now widely accepted that the problem of debt is one of the most serious burdens weighing on the Third World. It is right that our attention should be focused on the crisis developing countries are facing, especially in Africa. There can be little doubt that the burden of debt which is carried by the poorest countries is a major impediment to growth and a factor in preventing them from undertaking programmes and policy initiatives for development.
It is important to bring to greater public attention the paradox that, in spite of the publicity given to donor funded financial assistance, the overall flow of financial resources is from South to North, not from North to South. The developing countries are financing investment in the developed world, not the other way round.
Last year in Zambia and again this week in Tanzania I had lengthy discussions with Ministers from both Government about the scale of their debt servicing problems. I am, therefore, acutely conscious of the very real concerns that the governments in developing countries have about their ability to meet these repayments and at the same time keep their economies from collapsing.
I should like to consider the origins of the debt crisis. The mistakes committed then should help us to ensure that in any initiative that might be taken today, these errors are not repeated. In the 1970s many developing countries dramatically increased their long term foreign borrowing. Money was needed to build the social and industrial infrastructures of these countries and spending was increased on health and education, on road building and public transportation, and on increasing production in agriculture and industry. While some of the money borrowed was corruptly squandered or unwisely spent, the vast majority of investment projects were genuine and worthwhile.
Throughout the decade, commercial banks became increasingly involved in funding these projects. Cash rich, they saw the developing countries, and especially those in the middle income and oil-producing categories, as new and lucrative low-risk markets. Unable to secure the amounts they required in bilateral concessional loans from the governments of the developed world, developing countries gladly turned to the commercial banks.
The multilateral lending agencies, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), were an option, but their policy of attaching conditions and restrictions to their loans made them unpopular with developing countries. As a result, developing countries borrowed very heavily on loans that carried floating interest rates. At the time, this appeared quite sensible as real interest rates remained quite low.
The economies of many middle-income developing countries were growing strongly and the prices for basic commodities continued to rise until the middle of the decade. It seemed that there would be little difficulty for most developing countries in securing enough foreign exchange earnings to meet debt repayments as and when they fell due.
When the bubble burst, it did so both suddenly and spectacularly. To maintain vital imports of oil during the oil crisis of 1979-80, many developing countries were forced to greatly increase their foreign borrowings, just as the increased price of oil adversely affected their balance of payments. Subsequent falls in the price of oil in the 1980s did similar damage to those developing countries which were also oil-producing nations.
At the same time the oil crisis struck, world prices for basic commodities, on which many developing countries are heavily dependent for export earnings, began to decline. Between 1980 and 1988, UNCTAD estimated that real prices for commodities fell by an average of 18 per cent, with falls of up to 64 per cent in sugar prices and 57 per cent in tin prices. Africa's export earnings, which had grown by 22 per cent a year in the 1970s, fell by 9 per cent a year from 1980-84 and continued to decline in subsequent years. Attempts by exporters to boost production resulted only in a further depression of commodity prices.
Since 1982, the indebtedness of the developing world continued to rise. In 1992, the total external debt of all developing countries was US$1,664 billion and the World Bank estimated that this total would have increased by a further 5 per cent to $1,750 billion by the end of 1993.
In regional terms, almost 30 per cent of this debt is owed by countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The region's total debt is estimated to have risen by 4.6 per cent during 1993.
Just as Latin America and the Caribbean was the first region to fall victim to the debt malaise, so too is it spearheading the developing world's recovery. While there is still a long way to go, and allowing for wide variation within regions, most of the developing world's regions are beginning to show some fragile progress in easing their way out of the debt crisis. There is of course one major exception and that is Africa, and in particular, Sub-Saharan Africa.
The World Bank classifies countries by income levels and by debt burdens. To be categorised as being a severely indebted low income country (SILIC), a country must have a GNP per capita of less than US$675 and, in addition, either a ratio of 80 per cent, or greater, of debt service to GNP, or a ratio of 220 per cent, or greater, of debt service to exports. At the end of 1992, the World Bank had listed 31 countries as belonging to this category and of that figure, 23 countries were located in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 1993, it was estimated that the total debt of Sub-Saharan Africa increased by 2 per cent to US$198.2 billion. The bulk of this is made up with loans which many developing countries need to meet the cost of buying oil, spare parts and food.
To drastically reduce the amount given in official loans in an attempt to reverse this trend would precipitate a far more severe cash crisis in most seriously indebted developing countries than anything that has been seen so far. The other alternative, of replacing loans with grants, to the extent that Sub-Saharan debt was not being increased, would also be fraught with difficulties.
The majority of donor countries, given the current economic recession are reluctant to commit additional resources to their ODA. Even if this were feasible, it is likely that they would attach very tight conditions including economic structural adjustment provisions to such new aid.
Possibly the most serious consequence of the debt crisis for seriously indebted countries is the detrimental effect it has on the attraction of private investment to the country. Alone among the regions of the developing world, Sub-Saharan Africa did not receive a substantial increase in foreign direct investment in recent years. The growth of foreign investment represents one of the best avenues for growth for the developing world and it is vitally important that Sub-Saharan Africa should not be denied the economic impetus it can provide.
There is now no doubt that Sub-Saharan Africa cannot solve the debt crisis by itself. Since the crisis broke in the early 1980s the international financial community has been seeking ways to resolve it. Initially, rescheduling of payments was thought to be sufficient to resolve what was originally seen as a temporary problem. In more recent years, both creditors and debtors have attempted to find more innovative and effective means of resolving the crisis.
There are two broad categories of creditors: commercial banks and official creditors. The major creditors among the banks have grouped together in what is known as the London Club. The category of official creditors is further subdivided into sovereign creditors and multilateral agencies, such as the World Bank and the IMF. Sovereign, or bilateral, creditors have formed themselves into the Paris Club.
A common feature of all Paris Club rescheduling and IMF or World Bank loans is that a debtor country must be implementing a structural adjustment programme before it can benefit. These programmes are designed to reduce the balance of payments deficit in developing countries by setting macro-economic targets for each country. Without the implementation of structural adjustment programmes, the World Bank argues that it would be pointless in providing assistance through debt reduction to many developing countries.
