A/HRC/16/42 of the traditionally scattered settlement patterns. Any further construction outside of dedicated village sites would be forbidden, while people were forced by the authorities to abandon and destroy their homes near their fields. Justified and pursued as an emergency shelter policy to deal with successive waves of approximately 2.5 million “old case” and “new case” refugees returning home after 1994, the imidugudu model had longer-term demographic, economic and governance goals. In the north-west of the country, it also served as a counterinsurgency measure in the context of incursions from ex-FAR and Interahamwe in Congo and violent reaction from Government troops. 47. While the Government directed significant domestic and foreign funding towards the construction of new housing, primarily through the imidugudu (villagization) model, and achieved some positive results, these efforts were only very rarely based upon consultation with local people, and in some cases involved direct pressure, eviction and dispossession that would appear incompatible with international human rights law. The opportunity of moving to housing constructed as part of the imidugudu programme was popular among some residents living in inadequate shelter, but it was much less popular amongst households who already lived in good-quality homes49 . Villagers were seriously concerned that the new villages put people further away from their fields, making cultivation more difficult, especially for women. They were also concerned that those who had given up some of their land to make way for the villages seldom received compensation, which caused tension and potential conflict. In addition, houses provided in the imidugudu were often of poor quality and the authorities frequently placed unreasonable restrictions upon existing home-owners, requiring them to upgrade or replace their homes without due regard for questions of affordability and cultural adequacy and appropriateness. The indigenous Twa people suffered particularly severely as a result, through the imposition of requirements ignoring their traditional values and housing practices50. 48. The Rwandan imidugudu model was not simply about provision of shelter in an emergency context, the underlying vision was of a drastically re-engineered rural society, Consultation was limited, and participation mainly took the form of required “obligatory labour participation in construction activities51”. In spite of these obvious problems, and of lessons learnt in previous villagization projects in East Africa, the “emergency” status of post-1994 Rwanda secured the involvement of some international agencies52. However by 1999 international pressure and a related lack of donor funds essentially put a stop to the villagization programme. 49. The Rwandan Government remained in principle committed to the policy and relaunched the concept in 2007 following the promulgation of the 2004 Human Settlement Policy. In 2008, the Government announced plans to establish 30 pilot villages, one in every district, to encourage people to move into imidugudu through a system of positive incentives, such as the provision of agricultural tools and livestock. Major services, such as water sources and electricity supplies, have yet to be supplied in most cases, while many newly created villages have no services whatsoever. In addition, although the authorities stated their wish to be more open and to shift to an incentive-based rather than mandatory approach, the programme is still felt by many to be implemented in a “top-down” manner53. Nevertheless the overall process is proceeding apace and the Government estimates that by 49 50 51 52 53 16 E. Havugimana, State Policies and Livelihoods: Rwandan Human Settlement Policy. University of Gothenburg (Gothenburg, Sweden, 2009), p. 44. Jean-Pierre Bucyensenge, “Residents vow to phase out grass thatched houses” in The New Times. M. van Leeuwen, “Rwanda’s Imidugudu programme and earlier experiences with villagisation and resettlement in East Africa”, in Journal of Modern African Studies, 39 (4) (2001) p. 638. Ibid., p. 641. Site visits, field observations and multiple interviews by researcher Chris Huggins with implementers, officials and civil society organizations, 21 June to 1 July 2010.