Rights NGO dissolves top leadership

The “Ligue Rwandaise Pour la Promotion des Droits de l’Homme au Rwanda” (Liprodhor), a local organisation that aims at promoting human rights, yesterday dissolved its leadership over what they termed as “serious administrative blunders.”The administration was booted out by 47 out of 80 members of the general assembly, which had convened in Kigali to discuss a unilateral decision by the body’s outgoing head to pull it out of Cladho, a national umbrella for rights bodies.The former leadership of Laurent Munyandilikirwa was replaced by an interim committee headed by Aloys Munyegaju, that will oversee the Liprodhor management.The committee will also carry the Liprodhor banner at the forthcoming Cladho congress slated for Sunday, July 28. Genesis of crisis Before convincing the general assembly that the ouster of the management was the only solution, one of founder members, Augustin Gahutu explained that they needed to act urgently to arrest the crisis, which he said may lead to the dissolution of the association if they uphold the former president’s stand.Gahutu reminded members that in 2003, Liprodhor was accused of promoting ethinic divisionism and Parliament asked the government to dissolve it, but the leadership that followed tried to save the situation. The new crisis, he said, started last year, with Mundilikirwa supporting candidates from two other associations that were allegedly illegally voted to lead the umbrella-Cladho. According to a letter The New Times has seen, even the Rwanda Governance Board(RGB), which oversees local NGOs had refuted this Cladho committee and put in place an independent one headed by Marie Immaculé Ingabire, the chairperson of Transparency Rwanda.The appointment of the Ingabire-led committee provoked Mundilikirwa to pull the association out of the umbrella. He said he supported his decision because they could not be led by people imposed on them, and who are not members of the umbrella.“RGB acted illegally and I don’t know why people should defend them. I think there is a hidden agenda being pushed here,” he said but declined to reveal which force he suspects. All Liprodhor members that attended during yesterday’s meeting said that pulling out the association from Cladho would isolate them and in disassociating themselves from their leader’s actions, they voted him out of office.Liprodhor is a non-profit making organisation in the field of human rights and it was founded by 31 people in 1991. It is member of Cladho, an umbrella body of human rights organisations in Rwanda. Efforts to reach both the civil society platform and the current leadership of Cladho for a comment were futile, since by press time, the caretaker president could not return our calls after several attempts to reach him.

National

Rights NGO dissolves top leadership