Do Not Send ICTR Prisoners to Rwanda: Our Protest Against Senegal's Transfer Deal

The Global Campaign for Rwandans' Human Rights strongly opposes the plan to transfer prisoners convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), who are currently serving their sentences in Senegal, to prisons in Rwanda. We call on the Government of Senegal, the United Nations and the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals to halt any transfer that takes place against the will of the prisoners concerned. These are prisoners of the United Nations, and the United Nations must keep responsibility for them until their sentences are complete.

What Senegal and Rwanda Have Agreed

On 7 October 2026, the foreign ministers of Senegal and Rwanda, Cheikh Niang and Olivier JP Nduhungirehe, signed an agreement in Kigali on the transfer of sentenced persons. The signature came at the close of the first session of the Grande Commission mixte between the two countries, held on 6 and 7 October, at which eleven cooperation instruments were concluded, covering mutual legal assistance, extradition and the transfer of convicted persons.

An agreement between two governments does not decide the fate of an individual prisoner. The enforcement of ICTR sentences is supervised by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, and every transfer must still satisfy the international rules that govern it. Those rules are not a formality. They exist to protect people who are in the custody of the international community and have no power to refuse a decision taken in their name.

Why This Transfer Is Wrong

Consent is not optional. The transfer of a sentenced person to a state to serve the remainder of a sentence requires that person's informed and voluntary consent. Prisoners held in Senegal have reportedly raised legitimate concerns about being sent to Rwanda. A transfer carried out against their wishes, or after pressure, is unlawful, whatever an intergovernmental agreement says.

The risk of ill treatment is real and documented. Rwanda is the country whose detention system the ICTR itself scrutinised, and it is the country where prisoners of conscience die in custody, where detainees are held incommunicado, and where torture and ill treatment are routinely reported by those who survive it. Sending elderly and vulnerable prisoners into that system puts them at serious risk, and the international community would share responsibility for whatever happens to them.

Fair trial and sentence enforcement standards must be met. International sentence enforcement requires conditions that comply with international standards, judicial control over the terms of detention, access to legal counsel, medical care, family visits and independent monitoring. None of these has been publicly guaranteed in this arrangement.

Silence protects no one. The absence of a published text, of a prisoner by prisoner assessment, and of any independent supervisory mechanism turns a legal process into a political gesture between two governments.

The Warning from Dakar

Seydi Gassama, Executive Director of Amnesty International Senegal, has publicly called on the Senegalese authorities and the United Nations to take account of the concerns expressed by the prisoners themselves, and has said that they should not be transferred to Rwanda against their will. We associate ourselves fully with that position. His intervention is a reminder that cooperation between states cannot come at the price of the fundamental rights of the people in their custody.

What We Demand

1. No transfer against their will. These men are prisoners of the United Nations. They were convicted by an international tribunal and are held in Senegal on behalf of the international community. They cannot be handed to Rwanda, or to any other state, against their wishes. A bilateral agreement between Dakar and Kigali cannot change that, and the consent of a prisoner cannot be manufactured by administrative convenience.

2. The United Nations must carry its responsibility to the end. Supervision of these sentences belongs to the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, and it must remain with the United Nations until the last day of each sentence. The international community created this tribunal and accepted the duty that comes with its judgments.

3. At the end of their sentences, the choice belongs to them. If they wish to go to Rwanda, that is their right. If they do not, a host country willing to receive them must be found, or they must be given a real opportunity to seek asylum and to be resettled through the normal national and international procedures. No one should be left stateless, undocumented or in limbo because a government decided that his file was closed.

4. The agreement signed in Kigali on 7 October 2026 must be published in full, together with any list of names under consideration.

5. The United Nations and its Member States must state publicly that the rights of sentenced persons are not a bargaining chip in bilateral cooperation, and must refuse any arrangement that removes a prisoner from international protection before his sentence is complete.

The Wider Pattern

This arrangement must be read alongside the broader pattern of cooperation between Dakar and Kigali, which includes extradition and mutual legal assistance. Extradition and transfer are legitimate instruments of justice when they serve the truth and protect the accused. They become instruments of abuse when they are used to move critics of the Rwandan government into reach of that government, away from courts, monitors and public scrutiny.

The prisoners held in Senegal were convicted by an international tribunal, and the international community has a continuing duty towards them. They are not Senegalese property to be handed over, and they are not Rwandan property to be received. They are people in international custody, and their rights travel with them.

We will continue to follow this case.