International Development Committee - UK Aid to RwandaWritten evidence submitted by Population Matters

1. Population Matters has no view on the wider political and human rights case.

2. Rwanda is, however, a beacon of excellence in Africa in respect for its keen awareness of the importance of restraining population growth, and the need for intelligently designed and well resources family planning and reproductive health services to tackle the problem. Whatever other programme aid may be cut, we very much hope that support for this programme will remain in place.

3. The reason for the Rwandan Government to give such priority to family planning is best summed up in the following quote from James Gasana, Rwanda’s Minister of Agriculture and Environment in 1990–92: “In the report I wrote for the IUCN’s Task Force on Environment and Security, I suggested that four lessons be learned from this tragic chapter in Africa’s history [the Rwanda genocide]: First, rapid population growth is the major driving force behind the vicious circle of environmental scarcities and rural poverty. In Rwanda it induced the use of marginal lands on steep hillsides, shortening of fallow, deforestation, and soil degradation—and resulted in severe shortages of food”.

4. Elsewhere in Africa too, notably in the Sahel, competition by rapidly growing numbers of people for rapidly diminishing quantities of soil, water, vegetation and hence food is turning increasingly violent, and will probably continue to do so until populations can be stabilised. Human rights and political stability are among the first casualties of such conflicts, where the best-armed win the prizes. It is important for the wider continent that it remains able to learn from Rwanda’s example.

November 2012