2023 RLLR 268
Citation: 2023 RLLR 268
Tribunal: Refugee Protection Division
Date of Decision: December 20, 2023
Panel: Delano Fullerton
Counsel for the Claimant(s): N/A
Country: Rwanda
RPD Number: VC3-06603
Associated RPD Number(s): N/A
ATIP Number: A-2024-01360
ATIP Pages: N/A
DECISION
INTRODUCTION
[1] This is the decision of the Refugee Protection Division (RPD) in the claim of XXXX XXXX, a citizen of Rwanda. She claims refugee protection pursuant to section 96 and subsection 97(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA).[1]
ALLEGATIONS
[2] The claimant’s allegations are found in her Basis of Claim form (BOC) and narrative.[2] In summary, the Claimant is a twenty-five-year-old citizen of Rwanda who is opposed to being trained in the military or sent on military operations when she has not volunteered for service in the Rwandan Defence Forces (RDF) and has not been enrolled in accordance with the law in the RDF.
[3] On XXXX XXXX 2021, the XXXX XXXX came to claimant’s home with two other people and informed her that in a week she would be sent to Ngando training, a form of civic training required of young Rwandans after graduation from high school, as the government was planning a session for students who had missed that experience, and she had missed it while in Kenya.
[4] On XXXX XXXX 2021, a bus came to her house to pick her up and, along with several other young people, took her to the XXXX XXXX XXXX, a place where she understood Ngando training to take place.
[5] She remained at the XXXX XXXX XXXX for XXXX days. During this period buses continued to arrive with other young adults. After talking to other arrivals, she realized that most of the participants had already completed Ngando training, was told by other participants that their experience of Ngando training was quite different than what they were going through now, and realized that others had been told different reasons for why they were here; including some who had been told that they were their for job training and that they would have to do the job in multiple locations.
[6] After remaining at the military camp for XXXX days, many buses had arrived, and at 7:00 p.m. on the evening of the second day, everyone was told to get on the buses. After about two hours of travel, the bus stopped at a shopping facility and those that needed to use the washroom were allowed to do so, but people were allowed off the bus only one at a time, and each person was individually escorted to the washroom and then escorted back to the bus before the next person was allowed to go.
[7] At 11:30 that night, the buses arrived at another military base, called XXXX XXXX XXXX. The next morning the group was informed that the real reason that they were there was that they were all to be given military training and that they would then be sent to fight in the DRC “to defend our Tutsi brothers and sisters” who are being killed by the government of DRC.
[8] The claimant, in speaking to several other participants with whom she became close enough to speak and share histories saw a commonality among themselves, which was that they were all “youth who have parents who had roots in the Congo”.
[9] Just days into training the claimant woke up feeling sick and with a fever and experiencing dizziness. She was treated at the medical facility on the base, but when medications provided on the base did not work and blood tests suggested the need for more comprehensive treatment, an ambulance was called, and she was moved to the XXXX XXXX in the nearby City of the same name where she spent a total of approximately XXXX XXXX.
[10] As the claimant got stronger at the hospital, her physician allowed her to take walks around the hospital grounds, and as discussion of returning you to the military base started, she used one of these walks to leave the hospital grounds and avoid a return to the Military Base.
[11] The claimant continued to walk away from the hospital for some time and, as darkness fell and she followed lights in the distance, she inadvertently crossed the border into the DRC where, the following morning, residents of a house near which she was resting found her. The claimant and the local residents were unable to speak the same language as they spoke Swahili and she spoke Kinyarwanda.
[12] The local residents began yelling “Rwandan”, striking the claimant and pulling off her clothing, and the police eventually came and took her to the local police station. The police were unsympathetic to her and failed to provide her with either food or clothing, but eventually arranged for a man who spoke Kinyarwanda to come over and speak to her.
[13] The claimant was wary of what to tell him and told him that she had visited a friend in XXXX XXXX on the Rwandan side of the border and that she had gotten lost and ended up crossing the border unknowingly. This man interpreted this to the police, and then went and got her some clothes, and arranged with the police that he himself would escort her back over the border.
[14] Prior to taking her over the border, this man took her to his home and allowed her to call her father. He then went and bought her some medication and she slept. He noticed that members of the DRC military were coming to the house, and he hid her in the rafters of his home and then met them at the door and told them that he had already taken her to the border and returned her to Rwanda.
[15] The man later drove her to XXXX where she met her father who, deciding it was unsafe to take her home, took her to a different house that he owned in Kigali. Within a few days the claimant’s father recognized that he was going to have to find a way of sending his daughter abroad if he was going to keep her away from forced recruitment into the military and away from the conflict between the DRC and Rwanda.
[16] To facilitate her departure as a student, the claimant’s father tried to get the claimant’s report card from the school where she had studied but was denied the report card by the school unless he brought the claimant to the school with him. The next day the claimant’s father picked her up from her aunts and she accompanied him to the school. Shortly, after arriving they heard a school employee on the phone talking about their arrival to someone and they immediately left the school without waiting for the report card.
[17] The claimant’s father returned her to her aunt’s home, and that evening Rwandan soldiers arrived at the claimant’s father’s house seeking the claimant. When the claimant’s father denied knowledge of her whereabouts he was arrested and detained for XXXX XXXX.
[18] While living at her aunt’s, the claimant at first remained indoors. However, she began having medical issues due to a lack of exercise and she started walking around the house two times per week at night. Eventually the local defence force stopped her and escorted her home. The next day, having commenced an investigation, they came back in the morning to make further enquiries about her. The claimant’s aunt informed her father of these events, and he came and moved the claimant to the home of a friend in the Southern Province where she stayed until her student visa from Canada was approved. She left Rwanda on XXXX XXXX 2022 for Canada.
[19] The claimant alleges that she fears the government of Rwanda and especially the Rwandan Defence Force because she believes that they are training people to fight in the DRC, that they do not want that known, that they are afraid that she is going to expose them, that they are still looking for her, and that she will be imprisoned or killed if returned to Rwanda.
[20] She also alleges that there is no state protection for her in Rwanda and no place where she could live there safely.
DETERMINATION
[21] I find that that the claimant is a Convention refugee for the reasons that follow.
ANALYSIS
Identity
[22] The claimant’s personal identity as a citizen of Rwanda has been established, on a balance of probabilities, by her testimony and her valid Rwandan passport on file.[3] I therefore find, on a balance of probabilities, that identity and country of reference have been established.
[23] While the claimant speaks of herself as having “two countries” , namely Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), I am satisfied that the evidence demonstrates the claimant was born in Rwanda and is a citizen of Rwanda and no other country. She has never lived in the DRC and has no right to citizenship there. While her parents are DRC citizens, the relevant legislation provides that for the claimant to obtain DRC citizenship she would have needed to have commenced that process by the age of majority, [4] and that deadline has now passed. Her links to the DRC are cultural and ancestral, they are not legal. Except for a short period of time after high school where she went to Nairobi, Kenya and where she, without status, unsuccessfully sought work in that country, she has lived her entire life in Rwanda.
Nexus
[24] For a claimant to be considered a Convention refugee, the well-founded fear of persecution must be by reason of one or more of the five enumerated grounds: race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.
[25] I find that the persecution that that claimant faces in this claim is due to her general opposition to citizens, including herself, having to undertake military training or participate military operations if they have neither volunteered for, nor been legally enrolled in, the Rwandan armed forces. The views of the claimant in this respect amount to “opinions on any matter in which the machinery of state, government, and policy may be engaged.” [5]
[26] Accordingly, I find that the claimant has established a nexus to a Convention ground – political opinion. As such, her claim is being assessed under section 96 of IRPA. As I find that the claimant is a Convention refugee under section 96, I have not assessed her section 97 claim.
Credibility
[27] When a claimant swears to the truth of their allegations it creates a presumption that those allegations are true unless there is a reason to doubt their truthfulness. [6]
[28] In terms of the claimant’s general credibility, I have found her to be a credible witness. At the commencement of her testimony, the claimant indicated that she had a very hard time speaking in public and expressed some reservations about her ability to tell her story to me. However, we started slow and it seemed to be increasingly easy for her. I found her testimony to be sincere, spontaneous, responsive to questioning, and she had no hesitation in addressing areas which were unclear. There were no serious discrepancies between her oral testimony and what she said in her narrative. Therefore, I believe what she has alleged in her oral testimony and in her basis of claim form. I find that, on a balance of probabilities, she has established:
a) That she was taken by bus to a military base under pretense of engaging in Ngando training.
b) That once all participants had arrived for training they were taken to another military base and were told that they would be undergoing military training and would be subsequently sent to the DRC for military service.
c) That the claimant got sick and was taken to a hospital where she spent more than XXXX XXXX prior to walking away.
d) That the claimant’s father subsequently hid her in a variety of locations including, a property that he owned in Kigali, with her aunt in Rwamagana, and in the Southern Province town of Nyanza with his friend.
e) That while the claimant was hiding in these various locations, unknown persons were coming to her father’s door, or were phoning, and these persons were enquiring as to her whereabouts.
f) That the claimant has never volunteered for service in the Rwandan military, nor has she been enrolled in the Rwandan military in accordance with Rwandan law.
g) That Rwandan authorities are actively seeking the claimant.
[29] The claimant was unrepresented and has provided one document in support of her claim, which was a letter from the XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX which affirmed that the claimant had arrived on XXXX XXXX 2022, that she is in good standing with that community association, that they have welcomed her as one of their own, and that she would be a good citizen to Canada.
[30] While this document speaks to the claimant’s success and socialization in Canada and I have no reason to doubt the validity of this document, it does not address the central aspects of her claim and tends neither to prove or disprove the events surrounding the forced recruitment and I accord it little weight.
[31] However, documentary corroboration is not a requirement for a successful claim, and I find that the claimant’s subjective fear is established, on a balance of probabilities, by her credible testimony.
Objective Basis
[32] To establish her status as a Convention refugee, the claimant had to show that there was a serious possibility that she would be persecuted if removed to Rwanda. I find that the objective evidence supports her subjective fears and establishes a serious possibility of persecution for the claimant if she is forced to return to her country.
[33] Rwanda has a professional military which is lightly armed but widely regarded as one of Africa’s best trained, experienced, and most professional militaries.[7] One of its principle responsibilities is preventing infiltrations of illegal armed groups from neighboring countries, particularly the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)[8] and since 2021, Rwanda has deployed troops to the border with the DRC to combat the rebel Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). The RDF has been accused by the DRC Government of making incursions into the DRC and providing material support to rebel groups, which have been fighting with DRC troops and UN peacekeeping forces.[9]
[34] Military Service is Rwanda is voluntary and this principle is enshrined within Rwandan Law.[10] Recruitment of the Military is run by the Minister of Defence and there are a wide variety of recruitment programs “aimed at Rwandans from all walks of life”.[11] Moreover, Ngando camps do play some role in recruitment and NDP 8.1 speaks to the role of Ngando camps in recruitment in these terms:
RDF also draws recruits from “ingando camps, which are compulsory for all school leavers and provide political education on the history and situation of Rwanda” (ibid.). Programming at the ingando camps includes “basic military activities such as drills” (ibid.). The US Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015 similarly states that in Rwanda, there are “mandatory ‘ingando’ Military service laws, including age and conditions for recruitment; penalties for failure… 3/11 RWA105693.E 4 civic and military training camps [for youth] held after secondary school graduation”[12]
[35] However, there is objective evidence that both local authorities and the Ngando camp process have been implicated in pressuring Rwandans to join the military or in the extra-legal conscription of Rwandan citizens into the Rwandan military. NDP 8.1 says that ‘recruitment carried out by local authorities was “mostly voluntary,” but some local authorities “have reportedly resorted to conscription.”[13]
[36] More seriously, NDP 2.8, which describes in some detail the Ingando program, documents some allegations that were very similar to those the claimant has made.
The Associated Press (AP) reported in June 2013 that 14 men and 2 women fled Rwanda and sought asylum in Uganda, claiming they had experienced “harassment by officials” for refusing to attend an ingando program in Butare, 80 kilometres from Kigali. The students claimed that as a result of their refusal to participate in the program, authorities withheld their high school examination results. Two students stated that the reason for their refusal was because they claimed that their friends who had gone to the ingando training had been “forced to cross the border and fight alongside M23, one of many rebel groups operating in Congo’s troubled North Kivu province”. The students also reportedly claimed that “most of their friends who went there never came back”.[14]
[37] The objective evidence discussed above corroborates the claimant’s allegations of attempts to forcibly require her participation in military operations in the DRC. I have accepted that the Rwandan state authorities were actively attempting to locate her and that when the claimant’s father denied knowledge of her whereabouts he was arrested and detained for XXXX XXXX. I find it is more likely than not that these attempts to locate her were due to her fleeing the attempt to forcibly recruit her into the military, or otherwise send her to irregular military operations within the borders of the DRC. The objective evidence is clear about the persecution that individuals face from the state authorities in the face of indiscipline or resistance to government direction, and military detention of civilians,[15] as well as extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances, [16] appear to have been part of a broader strategy to enforce order and deter resistance to government orders or policies. I find that, should the claimant return to Rwanda, she faces a serious possibility of persecution at the hands of the state, based on her perceived resistance to government authority and because the has refused to comply with government authorities demands by participating in the training and military operations as directed.
State Protection
[38] There is a presumption of state protection unless the country is in a state of complete breakdown. This can be rebutted with clear and convincing evidence that protection would not be reasonably forthcoming or available to a claimant.
[39] Here the agent of persecution is the state and the persecution the claimant would face should she return to Rwanda is at the hands of the authorities. Accordingly, I find there is no state protection available to her.
Internal Flight Alternative
[40] I have also considered whether a viable internal flight alternative exists for the claimant.
[41] In Rasaratnam,[17] the Federal Court of Appeal developed a two-prong test to assess whether an IFA is viable. The test entails the consideration of two matters: (1) Whether the claimant would be at risk in the IFA, and (2) whether it is reasonable in all the circumstances, including those particular to the claimant, for them to relocate there.
[42] Here, the State is the Agent of Persecution and has effective control of all parts of the country. Therefore, I find that there is a serious possibility that the claimant would be persecuted if she returned to Rwanda, and therefor there is no safe location for her within Rwanda, and no IFA.
CONCLUSION
[43] Based on the totality of the evidence, I find XXXX XXXX, to be a Convention Refugee by reason of her political opinion. Therefore, I accept her claim.
——— REASONS CONCLUDED ———
[1] Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, S.C. 2001, c. 27.
[2] Exhibit 2
[3] Exhibit 1, Claim referral information from CBSA/IRCC
[4] Exhibit 3.2 NDP Package DRC, 28 April 2023, NDP 3.18 Global Citizenship Observatory, Report on Citizenship Law: Democratic Republic of Congo, page 14 of 19
[5] Canada (Attorney General) v. Ward, [1993] 2 SCR 689 at 746. See also Klinko v. Canada, 2000 CanLII 1711 (FCA).
[6] Maldonado [1980] 2 F.C. 302 (C.A.)
[7] Exhibit 3.1, National Documentation Package Rwanda dated 31 August 2023 NDP 1.3, United States Central Intelligence Agency, Rwanda the World Factbook updated 23 October 2023 page 32 of 37.
[8] Exhibit 3.1, National Documentation Package Rwanda 31 August 2023 NDP 1.3, United States Central Intelligence Agency, Rwanda the World Factbook updated 23 October 2023 page 32 of 37.
[9] Exhibit 3.1, National Documentation Package Rwanda 31 August 2023 NDP 1.3, United States Central Intelligence Agency, Rwanda the World Factbook updated 23 October 2023 page 32 of 37.
[10] Exhibit 3.1, National Documentation Package Rwanda 31 August 2023 NDP 8.1, Immigration and refugee Board of Canada, Military service laws, including age and conditions for recruitment; penalties for failure to report to duty and desertion; availability of rights for conscientious objection; military recruitment programs(2013-November 2016)
[11] Exhibit 3.1, National Documentation Package Rwanda 31 August 2023 NDP 8.1, Immigration and refugee Board of Canada, Military service laws, including age and conditions for recruitment; penalties for failure to report to duty and desertion; availability of rights for conscientious objection; military recruitment programs(2013-November 2016)
[12] Exhibit 3.1, National Documentation Package Rwanda 31 August 2023 NDP 8.1, Immigration and refugee Board of Canada, Military service laws, including age and conditions for recruitment; penalties for failure to report to duty and desertion; availability of rights for conscientious objection; military recruitment programs(2013-November 2016) page 7 of 11
[13] Exhibit 3.1, National Documentation Package Rwanda 31 August 2023 NDP 8.1, Immigration and refugee Board of Canada, Military service laws, including age and conditions for recruitment; penalties for failure to report to duty and desertion; availability of rights for conscientious objection; military recruitment programs(2013-November 2016)
[14] Exhibit 3.1, National Documentation Package Rwanda 31 August 2023 NDP 2.8 Information on ingando camps, including organization, structure, programs, and participation: instances of human rights violations in the camps (2010-November 2014) pages 8-9 of 62.
[15] Exhibit 3.1, National Documentation Package Rwanda 31 August 2023 NDP 9.3, Human Rights Watch, “All thieves Must Be Killed”, Extrajudicial Executions in Western Rwanda,13 July 2017 page 18 of 60
[16] Exhibit 3.1, National Documentation Package Rwanda 31 August 2023 NDP 9.3, Human Rights Watch, “All thieves Must Be Killed”, Extrajudicial Executions in Western Rwanda,13 July 2017 page 18 of 60
[17] Rasaratnam v. Canada (Minister of Employment and Immigration), [1992] 1 F.C. 706 (F.C.A.).