Overview:

• Recognition and registration are amalgamated rather than ideally differentiated; a focus is placed on legal registration with few to no means of existential recognition.

• The rule of mandatory registration violates the Bielefeldt provision.

• Informational requirements are intrusive due to the extent of the requirements, their complexity and the likelihood of their misuse to restrict religious activity or to otherwise deny applications.

Positive elements:

• Horizontal recognition is in effect.

Recommendations:

• Repeal laws and policies unduly and inappropriately restricting reasonable religious activity.

• Revoke the rule of mandatory registration.

• Establish a revitalised recognition system that has capacities for both legal registration and existential recognition, provisions which should be extended to all belief systems, and offered at multiple levels of activity.

• To become dynamic, the Rwandan government would need to establish a recognition agency that would manage the newly established recognition system independently from government (achieved by the government's relinquishment of its control of the agency following its establishment and its bestowal of state authority).