The trial of a former Rwandan minister began at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, on Tuesday. According to a press release from the Tribunal, the former higher education minister under the interim government of April-July 1994, Jean de Dieu Kamuhanda, appeared before judges Laity Kama, Mehmet Guney and William Sekule. His charges include genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity.

After years of fighting Africa’s most complex contemporary war, the armies of six nations disengaged March 29 and allowed U.N. observers to deploy in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Contingent upon the complete disengagement of the estimated 60,000 foreign troops, the deployment marks the first substantive step toward ending the country’s nearly three-year-old war.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned that despite the relatively calm situation in Rwanda, rural and urban poverty pose a serious threat to the country's economic and social development. In a report, it noted that out of 8 million inhabitants, 28,130 were Congolese refugees, 5,087 were internally displaced, 52,242 were recent returnees, 60,195 were affected by drought in the south and east of the country and some 2 million people were living in difficult conditions.

Louise Arbour, the former chief prosecutor of the international Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, predicted today that in spite of United States opposition, the International Criminal Court will become a reality because the question of personal accountability of leaders is an irreversible movement.

Rwanda has begun a week of mourning for the victims of the 1994 genocide in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.