By Sukhdev Chhatbar.
A group of former staff of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) will gather for a reunion retreat in Kigali and Arusha from September 14 to 25, 2025.
The Chairman of the Coordinating Committee, ex-ICTR Chief Engineer, Mr Sumathipala Wathugala, told The Arusha News that the retreat would begin in Kigali on 14 September, where participants will visit the former ICTR sub-offices, the Kigali Genocide Memorial and tour the city.
The visit comes nearly 30 years after the United Nations ad hoc tribunal began its operations in Arusha and formally closed in 2016.
The second part of the retreat will take place in Arusha. The programme includes a tour of the former ICTR offices at the Arusha International Conference Centre (AICC), a visit to the still-intact fourth-floor Chamber on the Kilimanjaro Wing and a Happy hour session on September 18 during evening at the Mount Meru Hotel, which hosted the Tribunal in its early days before relocating to the AICC.
The group will also visit the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) at Lakilaki, Kisongo, on the outskirts of Arusha town, which took over the Tribunal’s remaining functions after its official closure. The IRMCT also carries out the continuing functions of the ICTR for the former Yugoslavia, which was based in The Hague, Netherlands.
In addition, the former staff will hold a symposium, a social gathering and visit the Peace Park opposite the former Impala Hotel, where ICTR staff built an ICTR Monument as a remembrance of their stay in Arusha.
“Visiting ICTR Alumni are also going to reconnect with all we lived with during our stay in this beautiful town of Arusha,” said Mr Wathugala. He added that the retreat will serve as an opportunity to reconnect with colleagues and friends, explore investment prospects and open new avenues of life.
The ICTR was established by the UN Security Council in November 1994 to prosecute those responsible for the genocide that claimed an estimated 800,000 lives – mostly Tutsi and moderate Hutu – in just 100 days.
Based in Arusha, with support offices in Kigali, the Tribunal was mandated to try individuals accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Rwanda in 1994. Over its two decades of work, the ICTR indicted 93 individuals, including senior political, military and media leaders and delivered the first international convictions for genocide and for the use of sexual violence as a tool of genocide
