Why did the ICRC help to build prisons in Rwanda?
In mid-1995 the ICRC took an extraordinary and unprecedented step in Rwanda. Appalled by detention conditions of thousands of people arrested in connection with the genocide, the ICRC offered to help the authorities erect properly equipped structures to house the ever-increasing number of detainees – a move that could be easily misunderstood. In autumn 1994, several thousand detainees were held in Rwanda’s prisons which, according to the authorities, had the capacity to house around 10,000 people. A year later, the prison population had swelled to more than 60,000, and arrests were continuing. The people detained are suspected of having taken part in the genocide. The fact that the civilian population itself joined in the massacres partly explains the extraordinarily high number of accused. But the genocide has also engendered a climate of general suspicion. For the most part, individuals have been arrested merely on the basis of a denunciation. By the end of 1995, not a single detaine
