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Military Reform – 1997

Although the military reform started in Rwanda with the signing of Arusha Accord in 1993, the actual reform was not in line with the Arusha Accord. Reform was, for the most part, domestically driven as tensions arose between the Government of National Unity and international actors i.e. France, U.N. Peacekeeping, who had previously failed to respond to the genocide. The Rwandan government started to reduce the size of the military in response to pressure from international donor agencies in 1997.¹ This phase began in September 1997 and continued until February 2001 and involved the demobilization of 18,692 soldiers from the Rwandan army (RPA), 2,364 of whom were child soldiers. In this phase, some 15,000 ex-FAR combatants were integrated into the RPA and approximately 15,000 settled in Rwanda. Even if the overall objective of the RDRP Stage I was to reduce the size of the armed force to an economically sustainable level, the integration of the ex-FRA made the change economically insignificant.²

1. “Rwanda Starts Demobilization,” Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota), September 30, 1997.
2. “The Second Stage of Rwanda Demobilization and Reintegration Programme (RDRP Stage II),” RDRC, 2002.