Postscript to 'Selective feeding programmes for detainees in Rwanda'
We asked Ariana Curdy of ICRC to comment on this article:
This article raises most of the points I would want to make about the prison feeding programme in Rwanda. I will therefore mainly confine myself to providing a little more background and reiterate points that I think are most important.
Over the past two years the problems in the Communal Cachots (CCs) have increased. These prisons are now either full or overcrowded as populations have swelled. The centres were originally designed to be temporary detention places but are now more permanent places of imprisonment. There are currently 150 CCs with an approximate detainee population of 47,000. ICRC visit 91 of these centres, 12 of which are supported by CONCERN.
As indicated in the article, the authorities do not have the means to provide food for this population so that families of the detainees have been providing the meals. Besides the inherent problems of this type of support, e.g., some detainees have no family; some families live far away; families may be economically handicapped as males are the detainees; security problems limit ability of families to visit. Some additional problems have emerged lately. These include fragile food security in various areas due to returnee influxes, insufficient rains and poor harvests as well as food price inflation.
The ideal response to these problems would be to support vulnerable communities (including families of detainees). However, food distributions for security reasons are only feasible in limited/specific regions. Also, support for families of prisoners has proven to be a sensitive issue. Consequently, some organisations have left out families of detainees from general ration distribution lists while others have tried to get around the problem by targeting food for work activities at the wives of prisoners.
While support to families of detainees remains problematic there is no other solution but to support detainees directly. So far, CONCERN has been the only NGO to assist the CCs with food. The twelve cachots which have been selected with ICRC's help, are amongst the worst off of the 91. CONCERN distributes life-saving food to around 7,000 prisoners. Severely malnourished individuals are transferred to one of the prisons where therapeutic feeding programmes are operated by the ICRC.
Although there have been problems with food supply in the past which resulted in a reduction in the number of days feeding each week, CONCERN is now providing a full ration of 2,600 kcals per day for five days per week in their 'supplementary feeding programme'. Families make up the rest of the food on the four non-feeding days and add diversity to what would otherwise be a bland diet for the prisoners. In actual fact, ICRC classifies the CONCERN programme as a general food distribution. In my view, the only aspects of the programme which fit in with a 'selective feeding programme' categorisation are that prisoners are selected out of the whole community and only a small numbers of CCs are chosen. Otherwise the use of terms like 'selective' or 'supplementary' seem inappropriate to me as all detainees in a CC are taken care of while the size of meal is far greater than what is normally expected of a supplementary feeding programme.
Imported from FEX website