Rwanda - the 54th member of the Commonwealth - has in a short time made steady progress, says Clare de Lore.
It's the first new member of the Commonwealth for 14 years, a huge milestone for the tiny, tropical east African country, known as the Land of a Thousand Hills.
Membership entrenches Rwanda's deliberate orientation towards the English-speaking world, distancing itself further from its tragic Belgian and French colonial legacy.
In
1994, between 800,000 and a million Rwandans died in a 100-day genocidal rampage. The killings, where neighbour turned on neighbour, were organised with complicity from a former colonial power. Rwanda, one tenth the size of New Zealand but with twice our population, was littered with the bodies of men, women and children.
Until colonisation Rwandans lived together peaceably. Its road to 1994's ruin is a long story of colonial interference, favouritism, discrimination and patronage leading to envy and hatred.
It ended in rivers of blood. Such was the butchery, with machetes, that some Rwandans begged United Nations forces to shoot them cleanly rather than suffer slow, cruel deaths in piles of dead and mortally injured friends and family.
Up to 80 per cent of the minority Tutsi population living in Rwanda was exterminated and up to one third of the adult population may have been involved in the killings
When I made my first trip there in 2004 human remains were still being recovered and interred in mass graves at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre. The work goes on to this day.
Heart-rending displays inside the centre include bigger than life-size pictures of children. One shows a beaming Francine Murengezi Ingabire. Photographed at 12, her life and interests are not so different from those of many 12-year-old Kiwi children.
Favourite sport, swimming; favourite food, egg and chips; drink, milk and Fanta; her best friend, her big sister Claudette; means of death - hacked by a machete. At the time of Francine's death, the world looked the other way until it was too late. In the 16 years since, Rwanda has set about reconciling, and rebuilding a nation.
Landlocked Rwanda is bordered by four countries including Uganda and Tanzania, both Commonwealth members. It has strong commercial links with Commonwealth countries through its membership of regional economic and trade groups.
Because of violence in years before the genocide, many Rwandans lived as refugees in Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Canada, Britain and South Africa.
As a consequence, most educated Rwandans speak English, alongside Kinyarwanda and French, and all three are official languages.
Its legal system, previously dominated by Napoleonic law, is a hybrid like Canada's, with greater accent on English common law.
Rwanda has developed a constitutional foundation for political life, human rights protection, justice, reconciliation and non-discriminatory governance. The death penalty was abolished in 2007, and Rwanda now has a Human Rights Commission, an Office of the Ombudsman and a Gender Monitoring Office.
Women are guaranteed at least 30 per cent of posts in national decision-making institutions and Rwanda has the distinction of having the first Parliament in the world with a female majority.
Women occupy the posts of Chief Justice, Speaker, Vice Speaker of the Senate, key portfolios such as Foreign Affairs, Agriculture and Commerce, and the mayor of the capital Kigali, is a woman.
Economically Rwanda is progressing steadily. with 11.2 per cent GDP growth in 2008. It exports tea and coffee, and tourism is making an increasing contribution, especially gorilla viewing. The capital Kigale is relatively clean and safe for travellers.
While we in New Zealand wring our hands about whether we can manage without plastic supermarket bags, Rwanda banned them years ago.
Corruption is one of Africa's biggest problems, and Rwanda has instigated a zero tolerance policy.
On my arrival from London at Kigale Airport in 2007, I was politely questioned about my visa's origins and cost. The brief interrogation was to ensure I had not been ripped off by Rwandan officials in London. A proudly beaming immigration was as relieved as I was that all was in order.
In the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, which found New Zealand least corrupt, Rwanda was 9th equal out of 47 sub-Saharan countries, and 89th overall.
There's plenty of room for improvement but for a country that has come back from the dead, Rwanda has in a short time emerged as a stable, responsible and progressive nation ready to take its place in the Commonwealth.
* Clare de Lore was recently appointed honorary consul general for Rwanda in New Zealand. She is also an International Ambassador for Hope and Homes for Children, a charity working in 13 countries in eastern Europe and Africa.
