The Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, Human Rights Foundation (HRF), and Freedom Now, welcome the decision of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD), which finds that the detention of prominent Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire is arbitrary and in violation of international law. The three organizations submitted an individual complaint on behalf of Ingabire in November 2025. In its decision, the WGAD called on the Rwandan regime to release Ingabire and accord her the right to compensation and other reparations in accordance with international law.
Ingabire was arrested on June 19, 2025 at her home in Kigali, Rwanda. Hours earlier, she had been called as a witness in a trial concerning eight members of her party, Development and Liberty for All (DALFA-Umurinzi), and an independent journalist. The nine defendants in that case have been detained since 2021, and the WGAD declared their detention arbitrary in 2024.
The Rwandan regime is seeking a life sentence for Ingabire based on fabricated charges of establishing or joining a criminal organization, inciting public unrest, undermining the authority of the government, spreading false information to discredit Rwanda abroad, conspiring to incite public disorder, and conspiring to organize a demonstration. More than a year later, Ingabire remains in pre-trial detention without a trial date set.
“Victoire Ingabire is a fearless opposition leader who has endured years of systematic persecution by the Rwandan regime for exercising her fundamental rights,” said HRF Chief Advocacy Officer Roberto González. “The breadth and transparently political nature of the charges against her reflect the continued instrumentalization of the criminal justice system to suppress dissent, punish democratic opposition, and foreclose genuine political pluralism. Despite years of harassment, imprisonment, and restrictions on her ability to see her family, Ingabire has remained steadfast in defending the democratic rights of the Rwandan people. No one should be deprived of liberty for challenging those in power or insisting that democracy requires a real opposition.”
Ingabire was previously arrested in 2010, when she returned to Rwanda after leading an opposition coalition in exile. She was imprisoned for nearly eight years on charges of genocide denial and conspiring against the country through terrorism and war in a trial that human rights experts condemned as politically motivated. In 2018, she received a presidential pardon but was blocked from registering DALFA-Umurinzi and was prohibited from leaving the country.
“The Rwandan regime, led by Paul Kagame, has a long and sordid track record of using any means necessary to stifle criticism and silence dissent, including imprisonment and extrajudicial killings. Its ongoing persecution of Ingabire is further evidence of this pattern of repression,” said Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett, president of the Lantos Foundation. “The WGAD’s decision provides important legal confirmation of what we can all plainly see: Ingabire is a political prisoner who is being punished because she has the courage and audacity to advocate for a free, just, and democratic Rwanda.”
In its decision, the WGAD found that Ingabire’s detention “directly results from her peaceful exercise of the rights to freedom of expression, association and participation in public affairs.” Moreover, the WGAD notes that Ingabire has been denied access to her lawyer and denied contact with her family, both of which are violations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Finally, the WGAD emphasizes that the High Court ordered the prosecution to launch an investigation into Ingabire’s role in the case against her party members and indicated that it expected Ingabire to be prosecuted. The judges who ordered the investigation will be the same ones presiding over Ingabire’s trial, a clear violation of the right to a fair trial by an independent court.
“This decision by the UN is yet another repudiation of Rwanda’s wrongful imprisonment of Victoire Ingabire and its human rights record more generally,” said Andrea Prasow, the executive director of Freedom Now. “The Working Group has called not only for Ingabire’s immediate release, but for an independent investigation and consequences for the officials responsible. Rwanda’s international partners should insist on nothing less.”
HRF; Freedom Now; the Lantos Foundation; Kate Gibson, international human rights lawyer; and Iain Edwards, human rights barrister; urge the international community to hold the Rwandan regime accountable and to stand in solidarity with Victoire Ingabire and all prisoners of conscience in Rwanda.