Sir, - As an aid agency active in Central Africa, Oxfam is passionately committed to bringing humanitarian assistance at the earliest opportunity to those who have a right to it - Rwandan refugees and displaced Zaireans alike. But we must also strongly warn the international community and the Irish public that aid alone will not be enough. Unless permanent solutions are found to the deep-seated political crisis now spreading further across the whole region, there is no prospect of a quick end to such suffering.
We welcome the decision of Canada to lead in a military intervention to secure and protect humanitarian assistance, but we believe its mandate should not be confined solely to that aim. It must also make a key contribution to the efforts of the UN Special Envoy and others to achieve a political settlement in the region. Humanitarian, military and political strategies must work together.
Crucially, this means that the intervention force should be mandated to disarm the genocidal militia and forces of the former Rwandan regime. These elements are responsible for up to one million deaths in Rwanda in 1994, have destabilised the region from their base in the camps, and continue to entrap the refugees within their own political project, even at the cost of death by starvation and disease. Unless they are disarmed and separated it will be impossible to deliver humanitarian assistance safely, ethically and effectively to those who need it and the goal of voluntary repatriation for the majority will not be achievable.
Ever since the refugees fled to Goma and elsewhere in 1994, the international community has hidden behind an "aid alone" strategy. Repeated calls for action against the militia from Oxfam and many other agencies who are involved with the refugees - and who therefore took a particular risk in speaking out publicly - have gone unheeded. The Security Council ducked the challenge in March 1995 when it voted on security options, but this time around, its members have the chance to get it right by authorising both aid and political action.
States backing the military force are saying that they do not want to risk "involvement" in the regional politics, but by sending 12,000 troops into the region, along with a multi-million dollar aid operation, they are becoming involved. The question is whether they do so in pursuit of a coherent and farsighted strategy, capable of stopping this regional firestorm, or merely as a tactic in response to immediate pressure.
The Genocide Convention places a firm and inescapable duty on all states to find, seize and hold to account the perpetrators of genocide. Let the international community be wholehearted about its involvement, and let that involvement be on the side of justice. - Yours, etc.,
Director, Oxfam in Ireland, Clanwilliam Terrace, Dublin 2.