Saggi di Dodis 3 (2021/5)
Zwischen ethnischen «Säuberungen» und einem Militärputsch: Warum die Entsendung von Schweizer Präsidentenberatern nach Ruanda 1973 in Kritik geriet
Shortly after its independence in 1962, Rwanda became a priority country for Swiss development aid. In addition to conventional development policy cooperation, Switzerland also sent diplomats to serve the Rwandan president as economic and legal advisors. In 1973, Rwanda experienced ethnic «cleansing» as well as a military coup. In 1975, Switzerland stopped sending presidential advisors to Rwanda. This article traces how the deployment of presidential advisors, internally described as a prestige project, came to an end. It is shown that this decision was not only met because of financial and personnel limitations, but out of the fear that Switzerland could be accused of being too close to the Rwandan military regime. In contrast, humanitarian considerations, which would also have been expected based on the events, seem to have played a less important role.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0).