Mwakyembe advises member states to strategise on genocide

DAILY NEWS Reporter

MINISTER for Constitution and Legal Affairs, Dr Harrison Mwakyembe, has urged members of the Committee for Prevention of Genocide in the Great Lakes Regions to enhance strategies which are likely to prevent genocide and human rights violations in the region.

“It is evident today that crime trends have shifted and new ways of committing crimes and human rights violations have also emerged, hence the need for improved strategies to prevent genocide and human rights violations,” he said.
Dr Mwakyembe was speaking at the three days regional training seminar on deepening the institutionalisation, networking and capacity building of national committees for genocide and mass atrocity prevention in Dar es Salaam.
The seminar was attended by participant members states of Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo DRC, South Sudan, Uganda and host Tanzania under the sponsorship of the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation based in United States.
The minister said it was high time for the members of the committee to address any gaps that provide room for continued impunity by considering policy, legal and administrative measures that will be necessary to strengthen prevention mechanism.
He said prevention of the atrocities requires concerted efforts of each country based on the given nature of peace and security challenges, faced by individual countries, the region and the world as a whole. The minister said the region still witnesses atrocities despite having regional, international commitments, initiatives and national mechanisms for genocide and mass atrocity prevention.
He said the world has witnessed profound acts of atrocities in the past decade even in areas that were least expected and the effects were felt far beyond boarders of the affected countries.