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Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza (born 3 October 1968) is a Rwandan politician. She is the Chairperson of the Unified Democratic Forces (UDF) a coalition of Rwandan opposition parties with a large base of active members in Rwanda, Europe, United States of America and in Canada. She has been elected by the political council of her party as the official candidate for the next presidential election in Rwanda in August 2010.

Children

Victoire Ingabire has three children with different father.

Political career

Since 1997, Umuhoza has been involved in the struggle of the Rwandan political opposition in exile. Her objective is to introduce to her country the rule of law and a constitutional state where international democratic standards are respected, where patriotism will at last be the cornerstone for all public institutions and as well as in all aspect of life in Rwanda. Her political activities are centered around the idea of a state of justice where individuals choose their associations based on their shared political aspirations rather than their ethnic or regional background.^[1]

In 1997, Umuhoza joined the Republican Rally for Democracy in Rwanda ([1]). A year later, she became the President of its Netherlands branch and in 2000, she was nominated President of RDR at the international level.

From 2003 to 2006, she occupied the post of President of the Union of Rwandan Democratic Forces UFDR (french: Union des Forces Démocratiques Rwandaises), the main coalition of political opposition parties and personalities in exile, of which RDR is an active member.

Umuhoza, after 16 years in exile in the Netherlands, returned to her native country on January 17, 2010, with the intention to register her political party United Democratic Forces of Rwanda in order to participate in the August 2010 presidential elections.

Unification of the democratic opposition The fight for a unified political opposition in exile dominated her political career. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) continued to monopolize power in Kigali, criminalizing, persecuting or co-opting any resistance ^[2]. Inside the country, opposition to the RPF-led regime in Rwanda is almost non-existent. Only diaspora-based associations were able to mount an opposition attempt to Kagame regime but divisions and political rivalries in diaspora did not make this possible. In favor of fundamental change and reconciliation, she gradually changed the pace of the struggle towards a unified opposition with peaceful means ^[3] to stand up to the challenge of offering to Rwandans an alternative to Paul Kagame's regime.

• In November 2004, in Amsterdam, Netherlands she organized a conference known as the "Forum on Peace, Security, Democracy and Development in the Great Lakes Region" which was followed by the Amsterdam Initiative with the aim to create the new platform for cooperation.^[4].

• In October 2005, Victoire initiated contacts with other opposition organizations and organized an all-inclusive meeting for all Rwandan civil society associations and political parties. A consensus of common front against Paul Kagame's regime was finally reached.^{[citation needed]}

• Starting from April 2006, she participated in the creation of the United Democratic Forces (FDU) and was elected President of the political platform. FDU has a goal to install the rule of law in Rwanda, underpinned by the respect of democratic values enshrined in the universal declaration of human rights and other international instruments relating to democracy and good governance.^[5]

• Victoire actively participated in Highly Inclusive Inter-Rwandan Dialogue (HIIRD) project in Barcelona, Spain in 2004, 2006 ^[6] and in April – May 2009 ^[7] under the auspice of Mr. Juan Carrero Saralegui, the Peace Nobel Prize candidate [2] and of Mr. Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, the Peace Nobel Prize and Mr. Federico Mayor Zaragoza, the Vice-president of the Alliance of Civilization [3]

She proposed following emblematic reforms calling for change in daily life of all Rwandans and the way they relate to politics: Creation of a Committee of Truth, Justice and Reconciliation to help Rwandans towards true reconciliation; Introduction of a non-political commission in charge of rewriting and interpretation of the actual history of Rwanda; The passing of a bill for the right to private ownership and for protection of the weakest members of the public, for the guarantee by the law of equal opportunity and access to credit and employment for all citizens.

One month after she arrived back in Rwanda, together with other two political opposition party leaders already in the country, she formed a Permanent Consultative Council of Opposition Parties, putting together their efforts to widen the political space for the opposition parties and to strengthen the democratic process in Rwanda.[4]

Support of the Union Sector

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza is a founding member of many associations and foundations in the union sector: Association Contact, Dialogue et Actions Caritatives (CODAC) which seeks to give moral, legal advice and material support to the survivors of the Great Lakes region in the Netherlands or in their region; Association URAHO of women refugees from Rwanda in the Netherlands, focusing on getting Rwandese women out of isolation and helping them integrate into Dutch society, to assist non-accompanied children and asylum seekers; Fondation PROJUSTITIA-Rwanda, committed to fighting in favor of fair justice for all victims of the Rwandan tragedy; HARAMBE, platform of African women’s associations in the Netherlands committed to promotting development of African women on the continent. Victoire INGABIRE UMUHOZA was also member of the executive committee of ZWALU, a platform bringing together foreign women in the Netherlands to promote their emancipation.^{[citation needed]}

Criminal Ties

Ingabire collaborates closely with genocidaires (1994 Genocide deniers), one of them, her close aide Joseph Ntawangundi, was arrested and confessed to have killed Tutsi in Rukira Sector.

The 2009 UN Group of experts on Congo implicated Ingabire as one of the funders of the genocidal FDLR militia group still roaming in the DRC jungles. Ingabire has also been implicated in the acts inciting violence and creating terrorists groups aimed at causing state insecurity.

As a matter of fact, two suspects, Lt. Col Tharcisse Nditurende and Lt. Col Noel Habiyambere, recently arrested in Burundi, admitted having worked with Ingabire and Paul Rusesabagina to form a rebel group (CDF) to launch offensives in the country. Lt. Col Tharcisse Nditurende in particular admitted having travelled to Kinshasa from Goma in September 2008 to meet Ingabire and again met her in Congo Brazzaville to carry on with the plans to start the armed group.

Publications

She is the author of numerous articles and publications where she expressed her views on important issues pertaining to current events in her country and that of the Great Lakes region. Among others:

"What is the Outlook for Peace in Central Africa? " (translation) (2001)([5]),

"International Justice After the Crisis in Rwanda" (translation) (2002),[6]

"Conflicts in the Great Lake region of Africa: Origins and Solution Proposals" (translation) (2003),

"National Reconciliation As a Requirement for Security and Sustainable Peace in Rwanda and in the Countries of the African Great Lakes" (translation) (2004)[7],

"Pleading for a True National Reconciliation in Rwanda, Requirements for Sustainable Peace" (translation) (2005).

@@ Line 4: / Line 4: @@
 Victoire Ingabire has three children with different father.
-== Politics and Life ==
+== Political career ==
+Since 1997, Umuhoza has been involved in the struggle of the Rwandan political opposition in exile. Her objective is to introduce to her country the rule of law and a constitutional state where international democratic standards are respected, where patriotism will at last be the cornerstone for all public institutions and as well as in all aspect of life in Rwanda. Her political activities are centered around the idea of a state of justice where individuals choose their associations based on their shared political aspirations rather than their ethnic or regional background.<ref>[http://www.inshuti.org/sosdroit.pdf Le Rwanda Face à la Declaration Universelle de Droits de l'Homme, 2004]</ref>
-Victoire Ingabire who earlier this year came to Rwanda from the Netherlands with intentions to contest the presidential elections in August, was a member of the CDR (Coalition for the Defense of the Republic) extremists whose sworn duty was to exterminate every last surviving Tutsi in Rwanda, including babies still in their mothers’ wombs.
-Victoire Ingabire has been claiming that she never espoused the politics of genocide. In 1993, Victoire Ingabire together with her mother Odetta Dusabe, defected from Habyarimana’s MRND party to join CDR.
+In 1997, Umuhoza joined the [[Republican Rally for Democracy in Rwanda]] ([http://www.rdrwanda.org/]). A year later, she became the President of its Netherlands branch and in 2000, she was nominated President of RDR at the international level.
-The CDR philosophy was, according to its co-founder Jean Bosco Barayagwiza, that MRND was not doing enough to solve “the Tutsi problem.” This man co-founded CDR with Hassan Ngeze, editor of the infamous Kangura which among other things published the notorious ‘Hutu Ten Commandments’ that among other things exhorted “all Hutus to stop taking pity on the Tutsi ‘snakes.’”
-Ingabire’s mother Odetta Dusabe, according to the findings of a Gacaca court in Butamwa apparently was a faithful adherent of Barayagwiza’s philosophy of killing even unborn babies. Odetta Dusabe was a nurse at the Butamwa Health Centre and she used to do things to pregnant Tutsi women that is horrific beyond and belief. Suffice to say that none of the Tutsi women that fell in the hands of Dusabe ever survived – that is after she dealt gruesomely with their fetuses.
+From 2003 to 2006, she occupied the post of President of the Union of Rwandan Democratic Forces UFDR (french: Union des Forces Démocratiques Rwandaises), the main coalition of political opposition parties and personalities in exile, of which [[Republican Rally for Democracy in Rwanda|RDR]] is an active member.
-Victoire Ingabire was born on 3 October 1968 in Gatumba (former Kibirira Commune) and was the daughter of Pascal Gakumba. This man Gakumba too was an adherent of Barayagwiza and Ngeze and was a very active participant in massacres of Tutsis. International rights bodies like Human Rights Watch and other friends of Victoire Umuhoza Ingabire have not mentioned it, but Gacaca courts convicted both her parents, Gakumba and Dusabe of being very enthusiastic participant in the genocide, these convictions took place long before Ingabire ever declared her political intentions.
-After a Gacaca court passed a life sentence on Dusabe (Victoire’s mother), the woman fled to Belgium where she is to this day. But Gakumba (Victoire’s father) chose suicide after another court passed a similar sentence on him. The man drank rat poison and died.
+Umuhoza, after 16 years in exile in the Netherlands, returned to her native country on January 17, 2010, with the intention to register her political party [[United Democratic Forces of Rwanda]] in order to participate in the August 2010 presidential elections.
-Gakumba met Dusabe at a time the woman worked at a small health centre in Gatumba. It is said that Dusabe moonlighted as a sex worker after work hours. Not long after her liaison with Gakumba, Victoire Ingabire was conceived.
-Among the other men Odetta Dusabe came to know was one Dr. Akingeneye who was one of Juvenal Habyarimana’s physicians. Akingeneye apparently was enamored of Dusabe’s charms and it’s him who brought her to Kigali to work at the Butamwa Health Centre. Dusabe had two children with Akingeneye.
+'''Unification of the democratic opposition'''
-Ingabire grew up in a household of different fathers. She was not an adept student in her primary school years and failed to attain the pass mark to go to a government secondary school. So she went to G.S. Rambura for her secondary education. In the days of Habyarimana and Kayibanda the authorities made provisions for failing Hutu children to attain higher education. On the other hand the system made sure even the most brilliant Tutsi never went beyond six years of primary school. G.S. Rambura where Ingabire did six years of secondary school was a school for mediocre Hutu students. Ingabire never went to university.
+The fight for a unified political opposition in exile dominated her political career.  The [[Rwandan Patriotic Front]] (RPF) continued to monopolize power in [[Kigali]], criminalizing, persecuting or co-opting any resistance <ref>[http://www.ua.ac.be/objs/00111828.pdf Crumbling in Exile - The Changing Nature of the Rwandan Opposition]</ref>. Inside the country, opposition to the RPF-led regime in Rwanda is almost non-existent. Only diaspora-based associations were able to mount an opposition attempt to Kagame regime but divisions and political rivalries in diaspora did not make this possible. In favor of fundamental change and reconciliation, she gradually changed the pace of the struggle towards a unified opposition with peaceful means <ref>[http://www.ua.ac.be/objs/00110836.pdf The Dismantling of the Rwandan Political Opposition in Exile]</ref> to stand up to the challenge of offering to Rwandans an alternative to Paul Kagame's regime.
-After her sixth year at G.S. Rambura in 1991 she went to work in the Customs branch of the Ministry of Finance. In 1993, unsatisfied that Habyarimana’s MRND was doing enough to foment the required levels of Tutsi hatred that Ingabire and her mother decided to join the more incendiary CDR. In CDR Ingabire was a very active grassroots organizer for this group of extremists.
-According to Gacaca documents, her mother became even more active in the gruesome killings of Tutsi women and the unborn children of whomever happened to be pregnant in 1994.
+•	In November 2004, in [[Amsterdam]], [[Netherlands]] she organized a conference known as the "Forum on Peace, Security, Democracy and Development in the Great Lakes Region" which was followed by the Amsterdam Initiative with the aim to create the new platform for cooperation.<ref>[http://www.ua.ac.be/objs/00111828.pdf Crumbling in exile: The changing nature of the Rwandan opposition] Marina Rafti, 2005</ref>.
-People who knew Ingabire those days are very sure the only reason she wasn’t a participant in the Genocide was because she had gone to Holland for further training for her government job. She decided to stay in Europe when the RPF stopped the Genocide and drove out the genocidal regime.
-In Holland, Ingabire had three children which neither of them share a father.
+•	In October 2005, Victoire initiated contacts with other opposition organizations and organized an all-inclusive meeting for all Rwandan civil society associations and political parties. A consensus of common front against [[Paul Kagame]]'s regime was finally reached.{{Citation needed|date=November 2009}}
-The membership of FDU Inkingi for which Ingabire is the leader is mainly composed of former members of Habyarimana’s MRND and Barayagwiza and Ngeze’s CDR.
-These people formed the Rassemblement pour le Retour des Refugiés et la Démocratie au Rwanda (RDR) in the Mugunga refugee camp in the former Zaire and appointed Victoire Ingabire on March 25 th, 1995. In a big RDR meeting in Bonn, Germany on August 17th, 2000 during third RDR congress Ingabire was made the overall leader of the RDR. Additionally, on March 22nd, 2003, Victoire Ingabire was the leader when RDR changed its name to FDU Inkingi.
+•	Starting from April 2006, she participated in the creation of the [[United Democratic Forces of Rwanda|United Democratic Forces]] (FDU) and was elected President of the political platform. FDU has a goal to install the rule of law in Rwanda, underpinned by the respect of democratic values enshrined in the [[universal declaration of human rights]] and other international instruments relating to democracy and good governance.<ref>[http://www.fdu-rwanda.org/fileadmin/user_upload/home/fichiers/Political_Programme_udf_rwanda.pdf Forces Democratiques Unifiees-Political Program]</ref>
-Ingabire’s genocide affiliations have been out there in the open for anyone who wants to see.
-One of the FDU Inkingi officials Joseph Ntawangundi for example had been convicted of genocide and crimes committed during the genocide and left Rwanda. But once arrested he returned  and join Ingabire, FDU Inkingi together with Human Rights Watch and their friends set up a hue and cry that a member of the opposition was being wrongly jailed. That is until Ntawangundi himself admitted that indeed he participated in the Genocide. Ingabire changed her statements when incontrovertible proof of Ntawangundi culpability was made public and tried to disassociate herself from the guilty man.
+•	Victoire actively participated in Highly Inclusive Inter-Rwandan Dialogue (HIIRD) project in Barcelona, Spain in 2004, 2006 <ref>[http://www.veritasrwandaforum.org/dialeg/DIR06_engl.pdf Intra-Rwandan Dialogue, Barcelona DIR’06 Barcelona (Spain), June 2006]</ref> and in April – May 2009 <ref>[http://www.rwandadialogue.org/?p=22 Declaration of the Intra-Rwandese Dialog: DIR’2009 (representative Edition)]</ref> under the auspice of Mr. [[Juan Carrero Saralegui]], the Peace Nobel Prize candidate [http://www.spainview.com/people/biog_juancarrero.html] and of Mr. [[Adolfo Pérez Esquivel]], the Peace Nobel Prize and Mr. [[Federico Mayor Zaragoza]], the Vice-president of the Alliance of Civilization [http://www.unaoc.org/]
+She proposed following emblematic reforms calling for change in daily life of all Rwandans and the way they relate to politics: Creation of a Committee of Truth, Justice and Reconciliation to help Rwandans towards true [[reconciliation]]; Introduction of a non-political commission in charge of rewriting and interpretation of the actual history of Rwanda; The passing of a bill for the right to private ownership and for protection of the weakest members of the public, for the guarantee by the law of equal opportunity and access to credit and employment for all citizens.
+One month after she arrived back in Rwanda, together with other two political opposition party leaders already in the country, she formed a Permanent Consultative Council of Opposition Parties, putting together their efforts to widen the political space for the opposition parties and to strengthen the democratic process in Rwanda.[http://www.fdu-rwanda.org/en/rwanda/news-detail/article/rwandan-opposition-political-parties-have-formed-a-permanent-consultative-council-of-opposition-par/index.html]
+'''Support of the Union Sector'''
+Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza is a founding member of many associations and foundations in the union sector: Association ''Contact, Dialogue et Actions Caritatives'' (CODAC) which seeks to give moral, legal advice and material support to the survivors of the Great Lakes region in the Netherlands or in their region; Association URAHO of women refugees from Rwanda in the Netherlands, focusing on getting Rwandese women out of isolation and helping them integrate into Dutch society, to assist non-accompanied children and [[asylum seekers]]; Fondation PROJUSTITIA-Rwanda, committed to fighting in favor of fair justice for all victims of the Rwandan tragedy; HARAMBE, platform of African women’s associations in the Netherlands committed to promotting development of African women on the continent. Victoire INGABIRE UMUHOZA was also member of the executive committee of ZWALU, a platform bringing together foreign women in the Netherlands to promote their emancipation.{{Citation needed|date=November 2009}}
 == Criminal Ties ==