Musanze: Regional course on law of armed conflicts and military ethics ends at Nyakinama

28 officers from Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have recently graduated in a 3 weeks course on law of armed conflict and military ethics held at the Rwanda Military academy in Nyakinama, Musanze district.

The course aimed at empowering these officers on how to deal with military dilemmas by observing human rights during wars. In fact, though conventional wars have law and governing rules but war is not necessarily a fair play where engaged parties abide by these rules.

As said one of the participants, “war is most of the time unpredictable and chaotic and officers. It does not happen as it was planned and officers have to make crucial decisions at the battle fields”. This course was designed to help them to make informed choices in such delicate problems.

While closing this regional course, Lieutenant General Charles Kayonga, Chief of Staff says that the training is timely as “some of our countries in region are emerging from conflicts while other are still engulfed in conflicts situations”.

General Kayonga also emphasized that “still the contemporary operating environment is becoming more and more complex with emerging threats such as asymmetrical, cyber and terrorism and the like”.

He thereafter confessed that “these challenges require that military officers be more versatile and able to operate with efficiency while remaining credible and professional”.

In his intervention, Frans Makken the Dutch Ambassador to Rwanda asked these officers ‘to adhere to un doubtable ethical behavior and the strictness respect for the law of armed conflict’ as they have learnt during this course. He says that pursuing ethics is very enriching and much needed in military career.

As graduate said themselves, the courses have equipped them with so much needed skills during war time. “Though one party may not care about human or the loss of innocent lives as our experience in Rwanda is an eye opener, we are more than ever committed and better informed on what to do”  Lieutenant Colonel Zuberi Muvunyi, one of the participants. This RDF officer were referring to 1994 war with FAR whose armed forces avoided combat and rather opted to go and kill un armed civilians.

This was confirmed by his colleague from Burundi Major Trence Hakizimana who told us that this training help him and his entire country especially these days that his army is participating in peacekeeping in Somalia which is still in war. “Such hands on training are very useful to be qualified to carry out such missions”.

These two officers’ tales are like their colleagues who all confirmed that the course gave them insights on how to better behave in these complicated situations. They also unanimously say that experience sharing has been an added value and have invited them to transcend their cultural and background differences and should even in long term bring about more peaceful relationships.

They also pledged to go and spread ‘the gospel of ethical behavior’ amongst their respective army forces.

The course was the third to be hosted by Rwanda Military Academy at Nyakinama and was funded jointly by the Dutch Kingdom through its Embassy in Kigali and by the International Committee of Red Cross. Facilitators were from the Netherlands Defense Academy.