Abandoned orphan, wayward child: the United Kingdom and Belgium in Rwanda since 1994.

Analyses of the nature and policies of the Rwandan government since 1994 vary widely. On the one hand, the country is regarded as having made remarkable progress from a developmental perspective; on the other, concerns abound over the attitude of the government with respect to democratisation, human rights and regional stability. Donor agencies active in Rwanda engage with these governmental aspects in different ways, with some taking a more favourable view vis-a-vis such issues than others. This article examines the aid policies of Belgium and the United Kingdom in Rwanda between 1994 and 2005 - two donors with very contrasting historical experiences in the country. These examples demonstrate how the policies donor agencies pursue can be traced to their historical relationships with the recipient country, their domestic political contexts, and their approaches to aid. The article warns against a simplistic divide into “new” and “old” donors, a divide often used in the literature on Rwanda, as this masks more complex factors. The positions of individual donor agencies are constantly shifting, which raises broader questions regarding the current trend towards greater harmonisation in donor strategies with regard to developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]