These days, it seems that it has suddenly become controversial for politicians or diplomats to have a record of constructive engagement with Rwanda.

Among the media and NGO elites, who dominate the Western discourse on Africa, “Rwanda is backing M23” has become an article of faith, impervious to contradictory evidence.

Agenda-driven accusers have decided they are right and anybody who dares think differently is misguided or on Rwanda’s payroll. This is wrong and the harassment needs to stop.

After the genocide, Rwanda understood that strong regional and global alliances would be critical to a sustainable recovery. While simultaneously confronting the many pressing and complex challenges at home, we reached outward, building alliances in the region and engaging actively within the East African Community, the African Union, the Francophonie and the Commonwealth.

Despite residual anger among many Rwandans over the United Nation’s failure to protect our citizens in 1994, we did not shrink from the global body either.

In fact, Rwanda — with its modest population of around 11 million people and limited means– deploys the largest peacekeeping force today of any African nation.

We have aggressively and successfully pursued the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, accepted joint leadership of the Broadband Commission which aims to expand the reach of the Internet across the developing world and, twelve months ago, hosted a UN conference in Kigali on post-conflict peace-building.

When it comes to the UK and the US, Rwanda has developed particularly strong ties with many leaders across all major parties — and we remain grateful for their support of Rwanda’s social and economic progress.

Rwanda did not pursue this path of active engagement to win the approval of the rest of the world but, as our election to the UN Security Council attests, it has earned us a modicum of respect.

We understand what can be achieved by working effectively with like-minded nations — as well as within multilateral bodies — to bring about progress at home and beyond.

So what makes some in human rights circles and media adopt a position of infallibility and seemingly limitless posturing when it comes to Rwanda?

It all comes down to the allegations contained within a series of reports prepared for the UN Security Council by a Group of Experts (GoE) on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

According to various second and third hand accounts contained within these reports, largely derived from DRC military and intelligence sources, Rwanda is said to be supporting a rebellion in the eastern part of the country.

Few have actually delved into the GoE reports — which are a confounding flurry of acronyms and anecdotes — and rely instead on the “gist” contained in media accounts which are themselves derived from NGO talking points.

When I ask journalists to name any specific element of evidence contained in the leaked GoE reports that persuade them of Rwanda’s guilt in the matter, I am invariably met with blank stares.

The Government of Rwanda dedicated many hours to crafting detailed rebuttals of the “expert” charges, but they are rarely called upon because nobody appears to know exactly what the charges are.

Former US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Jendayi Frazer, called this out earlier in December: “I don’t think the evidence contained in the report is convincing,” she told Al Jazeera, “I don’t even know who the experts are.

There is a cloud of anonymity about who these experts are and what their agenda is.” Obviously startled to see conventional wisdom challenged so directly, the reporter sputtered a few names of Rwanda’s accusers as if that itself were evidence.

“Just because a lot of people say a thing,” Frazer responded, “doesn’t make it so”.

When Western media attention focuses on Africa, it is too often fleeting, superficial and negative. Context is always missing, history wiped clean.

Who is this week’s tragic victim? Who is the tyrant du jour?
It is exasperating to find ourselves reduced to a caricature and deployed in the service of political battles that, in the end, have nothing to do with Rwanda.

It is counter-productive when this translates into aid cuts that affect our ability to deliver services to our citizens. But it will not make us trade wrong for right, and it will not cause us to disengage with the world.

The Author is Rwanda’s Minister of Foreign Affairs.

{Daily Monitor}