During the colonial period the Belgian administration introduced identity cards recording the bearer's ethnic classification, and that classification was retained after independence. In 1994, during the genocide against the Tutsi, the card was used at roadblocks to sort people — carrying a card recording a particular classification could determine life or death on the spot. An estimated 800,000 to one million people were killed in about one hundred days.

It removed ethnic classification from identity documents and adopted an official policy emphasising a shared identity called Ndi Umunyarwanda, meaning I am Rwandan. It was a deliberate policy decision, showing that what documents create, documents can repair.

An identity document is never merely a piece of paper — it is a decision about what the state records about a person, and whatever is recorded can be used. A field added today for purely administrative reasons can become the basis for sorting people on a day nobody foresaw.

Hearings held in communities, presided over by elected community members and conducted where events occurred, operating for roughly a decade and processing over a million cases. Assessments are mixed: international organisations record that it handled a volume no other system could, while raising concerns about procedural standards and rights of defence.

Rwanda grants visa on arrival to nationals of every country and visa-free entry to nationals of African countries and certain others — among the most open policies on the continent. The logic is clear: landlocked with a small domestic market, the strategy is to become a regional hub for conferences, services and tourism.

Yes. Citizenship is chiefly by descent, naturalisation requires a statutory residence period, and arrangements exist for people of Rwandan origin abroad tied to policy encouraging return. There is no Caribbean-style citizenship-by-investment programme, only investor residence.

Rwanda has the highest proportion of women in parliament in the world, banned plastic bags in 2008, has achieved high sustained growth for many years, and runs a high-value low-volume gorilla conservation model. At the same time, international human rights organisations document significant restrictions on political space, press freedom and opposition activity, and relations with the Democratic Republic of the Congo are the subject of numerous international reports. Both are needed to judge.

A high-value, low-volume model at Volcanoes National Park — limiting visitor numbers by price to protect what is being conserved. It is the same principle as Bhutan's sustainable development fee.