|Area:||26,338 sq km (10,169 sq mi)|
|Population||(2005 est.): 8,574,000|
|Head of state and government:||President Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame, assisted by Prime Minister Bernard Makuza|
Rwanda attained relative stability in 2005 under the regime of Pres. Paul Kagame and the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), although the government had not yet shed its authoritarian rule. The country made steady progress in reconstructing its economy. The government set up a poverty-alleviation program designed to implement a system of sustainable development that met the requirements of the debt-relief program of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. To further Rwanda’s case, President Kagame visited the United States from September 13 to 19 and addressed the UN General Assembly on the challenges of worldwide poverty and postconflict reconstruction.
Throughout the year Rwanda sought to project a positive international image. In July, Finance Minister Donald Kaberuka was elected president of the African Development Bank, which signaled that the country was ready to take its place in pan-African policy making and diplomacy.
Tense relations continued with neighbouring states in the Great Lakes region, particularly the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which accused Rwanda of backing rebel leaders in its eastern region in attacks against Hutu refugees who after the 1994 genocide had sought refuge there. In July UN peacekeepers destroyed the main Rwandan base in eastern Congo and warned the rebels to disarm and return to Rwanda. Rebel leaders, however, had resisted earlier attempts to push them back, declaring that they wanted a guarantee of amnesty. Elsewhere efforts to persuade refugees to return home achieved some success. In October a small group returned from Uganda. Still, an estimated 48,000 refugees remained scattered in 14 African countries.
The 1994 genocide still preoccupied the nation. In March local courts called gacaca began the process of identifying the victims and perpetrators of massacres. This process reached deep into sociopolitical and religious hierarchies. Catholic leaders and priests were accused of having had close relations with extremist politicians prior to the genocide or even helped Hutu militias. In July, Archbishop Thaddée Ntihinyurwa, the head of the Roman Catholic Church of Rwanda, was summoned to testify before the Nyamasheke court about his role in the massacre of thousands of Tutsi in the district church. On September 19 the United Nations Appeals Chamber in The Hague upheld the life sentence of former Rwandan minister Jean de Dieu Kamuhanda. On September 23 it was announced that genocide suspect Joseph Serugendo had been extradited from Libreville, Gabon, to Arusha, Tanz., in order to stand trial before the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda; this brought the number of arrests by the court to 71.