RWANDA: Harassed to Harass in the Name of Dignity - Young People as a Tool to Oppress the Population

Overview

This special report, authored by Rene C Mugenzi for the Global Campaign for Rwandans' Human Rights, investigates how the Rwandan government systematically exploits its own youth as instruments of propaganda, surveillance and control. Drawing on interviews with 43 respondents over ten months, including young Rwandans in Rwanda, the diaspora and current or former government officials, the report exposes a coordinated machinery that turns education and civic programmes into tools of oppression.

A Pattern of Flight

The report opens by noting a troubling pattern: a growing number of young Rwandans sent abroad on government or donor scholarships have chosen not to return home, instead seeking asylum in the UK, France, Belgium and the United States. Unlike typical economic migration, these were young people from stable backgrounds with real prospects at home - a signal that something deeper was driving them to flee.

Civic Education Camps as Mind Control

At the centre of the report is Ingando, the mandatory residential training camp every Rwandan youth must attend after secondary school to qualify for university or public employment. Presented officially as civic education, the report finds these camps function as forced ideological indoctrination, splitting participants along ethnic lines and instilling a single, unquestionable version of the country's history. Refusal is not a real option: without the camp's certificate, young people are shut out of higher education and government jobs. Testimony collected by the organisation describes resulting trauma, breakdowns and even suicide attempts among participants who underwent this forced re-education.

Training Secret Informers

The report documents a further, more clandestine layer: confidential residential training run at Nasho in eastern Rwanda, where newly graduated students are quietly recruited through trusted networks to become informal intelligence agents. Trainees are placed across government departments, tasked with secretly monitoring colleagues and, when directed, manufacturing accusations against people the regime wants removed. For young people facing poverty and few opportunities, this recruitment is dressed up as a privilege, drawing in graduates who dream that compliance will improve their lives.

Reaching Into the Diaspora

The surveillance apparatus extends abroad through diaspora youth programmes coordinated by Rwandan embassies and High Commissions. Young Rwandans studying overseas, particularly those on government scholarships, describe pressure to promote the government's image online, challenge critical articles, and report on fellow Rwandans seeking asylum or involved in opposition activity. Some are placed as interns inside public relations firms working for the Rwandan government in the UK and USA, expanding a coordinated propaganda operation among students who came abroad simply to study.

A Web of State Institutions

The report names the state bodies it found working together to run these programmes: the Rwandan Patriotic Front Secretariat, the Ministry of Defence, the National Intelligence and Security Services, the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission, and the Diaspora General Directorate within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, among others - illustrating how deeply embedded this exploitation of youth is within the machinery of government.

Recommendations

The Global Campaign for Rwandans' Human Rights calls on the Rwandan government to end all coercive youth programmes, halt the use of young people for espionage at home and abroad, provide mental health support to those harmed by these forced activities, and calls on host countries to give full and fair consideration to asylum claims from young Rwandans shaped by these experiences.

The complete report, including detailed testimony and analysis, is available to download above.