Gisimba Memorial Center

Gisimba Memorial Center.

Kigali, Rwanda. Afrika.

June, 2005.

 

If you are interested in sponsoring an orphan at Gisimba Memorial Center, direct contact information is listed below.

Ildephonse Niyongana - Director

Damas Gisimba - Founder

gisimbacmg@yahoo.com

Gisimba Orphanage

B.P. 1433 Kigali Rwanda

 

Ave de la Nyarugenge

Nyamirambo

District of Nyarugenge

tel +250 08524515 or +250 08532596

 

Bank of Kigali 040-0013914-76

swift BK IG RWRW

 

Additional information can also be found on www.orphansofrwanda.org

 

Please consider making a difference in the lives of orphans in Rwanda

by visiting "Orphans of Rwanda": www.orphansofrwanda.org/getinvolved.php#donate

 

Rwanda: Hundreds Illegally Detained in Former Warehouse

Detention Center in Gikondo Must Be Closed and Children Released

 

(New York, May 15, 2006) Hundreds of persons, many of them

children, are being held in deplorable conditions in an unofficial detention

center in the Gikondo neighborhood of the Rwandan capital Kigali,

Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper issued today.

 

The 13-page paper, "Swept Away: Street Children Illegally Detained in

Kigali, Rwanda" documents life at the center based on the testimony of

children and young adults formerly detained there.

 

"Kigali city officials who are running the detention center recognize that it

must be closed," said Alison Des Forges, senior adviser to the Africa

division of Human Rights Watch. "From the perspective of the children

held there, the sooner, the better."

 

Thousands of Rwandan children eke out a bare living on the streets of

Kigali and other urban areas, many having no adult care as a consequence

of the 1994 genocide, war or the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Since 1997 city

authorities have regularly rounded up street children as well as beggars,

street vendors and sex workers. In 2005 they began detaining many of

these people in a former warehouse in Gikondo, a short distance from the

luxury hotels frequented by international visitors.

 

Authorities hold the detainees as "vagrants" under colonial-era regulations

but rarely formally charge them, bring them to court, or afford them the

due process rights guaranteed under the Rwandan constitution and

international conventions by which Rwanda is bound. According to

authorities, the site is officially meant to be a "transit center" with persons

detained for no more than three days.

 

In fact, some detainees have spent weeks or months in detention before

being released without any judicial procedure. Detainees receive

inadequate food, water, and medical care; they sleep on the floor without

blankets or mattresses.

 

"Detaining children just because they are poor, dirty, and have no one to

care for them violates their rights," said Des Forges. "Under international

and Rwandan law, the state must protect these children, not just sweep

them out of sight."

 

"Swept Away: Street Children Illegally Detained in Kigali, Rwanda"

is available at: hrw.org/backgrounder/africa/rwanda0506/

 

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