"My name is Dr Etienne Ruvebana. I am a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law of the University of Rwanda. I studied Law at the National University of Rwanda at the Bachelor level, and at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands for my LL.M and PhD degrees.

With this opportunity, I would like to warmly congratulate the Embassy of the Republic of Rwanda on its 15th Anniversary of its work in the Netherlands.

When this Embassy was established in the Netherlands in November 2006, I was doing my LL.M studies at the University of Groningen. Since then, I was privileged to interact with the Embassy in various ways. In particular, the Embassy has actively participated in all the events on the commemoration of the genocide against the Tutsi that we organized at the University of Groningen, in April 2007 and on an annual basis from 2010 to 2014( during the time I was doing my PhD).

I was also highly honored to have his Excellency the Ambassador of the Republic of Rwanda Jean Pierre Karabaranga attend my PhD defense in 2014. That was a memorable great honor for me and for the University of Groningen.

In addition to the collaboration with the Embassy at the institutional level, the Embassy has been very useful in providing services to those who needed them, especially with issuing relevant documents to people who belonged to the Rwandan community in the NL.

For the future, I wish the Embassy an excellent continuation of good work. In particular, the Netherlands being a country that has played a remarkable role in the reconstruction of Rwanda after 1994 in various forms, including the justice sector; the Rwandan Embassy would need to strengthen its collaboration with key Dutch institutions even further, in order to keep the great bonds between the 2 countries.This could result in developing new big projects in areas in which the Netherlands has been active in the past or even in new areas.

I wish the best to the Embassy of the Republic of Rwanda in the Netherlands; and once again I congratulate it for the work done."