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Between the months of April and July in 1994, mainly people who were apart of the Tutsi clan were mass murdered the by the Hutu clan. The Hutu clan murdered over 800,000 people during this time. They also displaced thousands, if not more, Rwandans from their homes,

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During the Rwandan genocide of 1994, members of the Hutu ethnic majority in the east-central African nation of Rwanda murdered as many as 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi minority. Started by Hutu nationalists in the capital of Kigali, the genocide spread throughout the country with shocking speed and brutality, as ordinary citizens were incited by local officials and the Hutu Power government to take up arms against their neighbors. By the time the Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front gained control of the country through a military offensive in early July, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were dead and 2 million refugees (mainly Hutus) fled Rwanda, exacerbating what had already become a full-blown humanitarian crisis.

Rwandan Ethnic Tensions

By the early 1990s, Rwanda, a small country with an overwhelmingly agricultural economy, had one of the highest population densities in Africa. About 85 percent of its population was Hutu; the rest were Tutsi, along with a small number of Twa, a Pygmy group who were the original inhabitants of Rwanda.

Part of German East Africa from 1897 to 1918, Rwanda became a Belgium trusteeship under a League of Nations mandate after World War I, along with neighboring Burundi.

Rwanda's colonial period, during which the ruling Belgians favored the minority Tutsis over the Hutus, exacerbated the tendency of the few to oppress the many, creating a legacy of tension that exploded into violence even before Rwanda gained its independence.

A Hutu revolution in 1959 forced as many as 330,000 Tutsis to flee the country, making them an even smaller minority. By early 1961, victorious Hutus had forced Rwanda's Tutsi monarch into exile and declared the country a republic. After a United Nations referendum that same year, Belgium officially granted independence to Rwanda in July 1962.

Ethnically motivated violence continued in the years following independence. In 1973, a military group installed Major General Juvenal Habyarimana, a moderate Hutu, in power.

The sole leader of Rwandan government for the next two decades, Habyarimana founded a new political party, the National Revolutionary Movement for Development (NRMD). He was elected president under a new constitution ratified in 1978 and reelected in 1983 and 1988, when he was the sole candidate.

In 1990, forces of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), consisting mostly of Tutsi refugees, invaded Rwanda from Uganda. Habyarimana accused Tutsi residents of being RPF accomplices and arrested hundreds of them. Between 1990 and 1993, government officials directed massacres of the Tutsi, killing hundreds. A ceasefire in these hostilities led to negotiations between the government and the RPF in 1992.

In August 1993, Habyarimana signed an agreement at Arusha, Tanzania, calling for the creation of a transition government that would include the RPF.

This power-sharing agreement angered Hutu extremists, who would soon take swift and horrible action to prevent it.

Rwandan Genocide Begins

On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Habyarimana and Burundi's president Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down over the capital city of Kigali, leaving no survivors. (It has never been conclusively determined who the culprits were. Some have blamed Hutu extremists, while others blamed leaders of the RPF.)

Within an hour of the plane crash, the Presidential Guard, together with members of the Rwandan armed forces (FAR) and Hutu militia groups known as the Interahamwe ("Those Who Attack Together") and Impuzamugambi ("Those Who Have the Same Goal"), set up roadblocks and barricades and began slaughtering Tutsis and moderate Hutus with impunity.

Among the first victims of the genocide were the moderate Hutu Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and 10 Belgian peacekeepers, killed on April 7. This violence created a political vacuum, into which an interim government of extremist Hutu Power leaders from the military high command stepped on April 9. The killing of the Belgium peacekeepers, meanwhile, provoked the withdrawal of Belgium troops. And the U.N. directed that peacekeepers only defend themselves thereafter.

Slaughter Spreads Across Rwanda

The mass killings in Kigali quickly spread from that city to the rest of Rwanda. In the first two weeks, local administrators in central and southern Rwanda, where most Tutsi lived, resisted the genocide. After April 18, national officials removed the resisters and killed several of them. Other opponents then fell silent or actively led the killing. Officials rewarded killers with food, drink, drugs and money. Government-sponsored radio stations started calling on ordinary Rwandan civilians to murder their neighbors. Within three months, some 800,000 people had been slaughtered.

Meanwhile, the RPF resumed fighting, and civil war raged alongside the genocide. By early July, RPF forces had gained control over most of country, including Kigali.

In response, more than 2 million people, nearly all Hutus, fled Rwanda, crowding into refugee camps in the Congo (then called Zaire) and other neighboring countries.

After its victory, the RPF established a coalition government similar to that agreed upon at Arusha, with Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu, as president and Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, as vice president and defense minister.

Habyarimana's NRMD party, which had played a key role in organizing the genocide, was outlawed, and a new constitution adopted in 2003 eliminated reference to ethnicity. The new constitution was followed by Kagame's election to a 10-year term as Rwanda's president and the country's first-ever legislative elections.

International Response

As in the case of atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia around the same time, the international community largely remained on the sidelines during the Rwandan genocide.

A United Nations Security Council vote in April 1994 led to the withdrawal of most of a U.N. peacekeeping operation (UNAMIR), created the previous fall to aid with governmental transition under the Arusha accord.

As reports of the genocide spread, the Security Council voted in mid-May to supply a more robust force, including more than 5,000 troops. By the time that force arrived in full, however, the genocide had been over for months.

In a separate French intervention approved by the U.N., French troops entered Rwanda from Zaire in late June. In the face of the RPF's rapid advance, they limited their intervention to a "humanitarian zone" set up in southwestern Rwanda, saving tens of thousands of Tutsi lives but also helping some of the genocide's plotters - allies of the French during the Habyarimana administration - to escape.

In the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, many prominent figures in the international community lamented the outside world's general obliviousness to the situation and its failure to act in order to prevent the atrocities from taking place.

As former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali told the PBS news program Frontline: "The failure of Rwanda is 10 times greater than the failure of Yugoslavia. Because in Yugoslavia the international community was interested, was involved. In Rwanda nobody was interested."

Attempts were later made to rectify this passivity. After the RFP victory, the UNAMIR operation was brought back up to strength; it remained in Rwanda until March 1996, as one of the largest humanitarian relief efforts in history.

Did you know? In September 1998, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) issued the first conviction for genocide after a trial, declaring Jean-Paul Akayesu guilty for acts he engaged in and oversaw as mayor of the Rwandan town of Taba.

Rwandan Genocide Trials

In October 1994, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), located in Tanzania, was established as an extension of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague, the first international tribunal since the Nuremburg Trials of 1945-46, and the first with the mandate to prosecute the crime of genocide.

In 1995, the ICTR began indicting and trying a number of higher-ranking people for their role in the Rwandan genocide; the process was made more difficult because the whereabouts of many suspects were unknown.

The trials continued over the next decade and a half, including the 2008 conviction of three former senior Rwandan defense and military officials for organizing the genocide.

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During the Rwandan genocide of 1994, members of the Hutu ethnic majority in the east-central African nation of Rwanda murdered as many as 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi minority. Started by Hutu nationalists in the capital of Kigali, the genocide spread throughout the country with shocking speed and brutality, as ordinary citizens were incited by local officials and the Hutu Power government to take up arms against their neighbors.

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The children of the Rwandan genocide are still affected to this day. They witnessed unspeakable violence. Many of them lost their mothers and/or fathers.

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UNICEF | Children's Rights & Emergency Relief Organization

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Press release

Ten years after genocide, Rwandan children suffer lasting impact

Rwanda has one of world's highest proportions of child-headed households

GENEVA/NEW YORK, 6 April 2004 - Ten years after the genocide in Rwanda that took the lives of 800,000 people, the country's children continue to struggle with the lingering impact of the atrocities, UNICEF said today.

"Ten years later, the children of Rwanda are still suffering the consequences of a conflict caused entirely by adults," UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said. "For them, the genocide is not just a historical event, but an inescapable part of daily life today and tomorrow."

By the end of the genocide in 1994, 95,000 children had been orphaned.

"The children of Rwanda witnessed unspeakable violence," Bellamy said. "Tens of thousands lost their mothers and fathers. Thousands were victims of horrific brutality and rape. Many were forced to commit atrocities. The impact of the tragedy simply cannot be overstated."

Today, Rwanda's children face extreme challenges:

Rwanda is home to one of the world's largest proportions of child-headed households, with an estimated 101,000 children living in some 42,000 households. These children are on their own either because their parents were killed in the genocide, died from AIDS or have been imprisoned for genocide-related crimes.

2000 women - many of whom were survivors of rape, were tested for HIV during the five years following the 1994 genocide. Of them 80 per cent were found to be HIV positive. Many were not sexually active before the genocide.

By 2001, an estimated 264,000 children had lost one or both parents to AIDS, representing 43 percent of all orphans. This figure is expected to grow to over 350,000 by 2010.

More than 400,000 children are out of school.

Rwanda has one of the world's worst child mortality rates - 1 in 5 Rwandan children die before their fifth birthday.

Bellamy said the anniversary must be marked with renewed concern for those continuing to suffer from the genocide.

"We are all still accountable for supporting reconciliation and healing, and for ensuring that such atrocities never happen again," Bellamy said. "'Never again' means holding perpetrators accountable and restoring the dignity of victims by commemorating or alleviating their suffering."

Even more important, Bellamy said, is to meet this anniversary with a renewed commitment to ensure that the world never again allows such a catastrophe to go unchecked.

****
For more information, please contact:
Jehane Sedky-Lavandero, UNICEF Media, New York, 212 326-7259,
Mark Vergara, UNICEF Geneva, 41-22 909 5718

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Ten years after genocide, Rwandan children suffer lasting impact

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Rwanda has one of world's highest proportions of child-headed households GENEVA/NEW YORK, 6 April 2004 - Ten years after the genocide in Rwanda that took the lives of 800,000 people, the country's children continue to struggle with the lingering impact of the atrocities, UNICEF said today.

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“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed....Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.”

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This shows a map comparing the beginning of the Rwandan Genocide to the end of the Rwandan Genocide. It shows where mass graveyards, memorials, and resistance sites were.

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Satellite Maps of Rwanda Before and After the 1994 Genocide | Genocide Studies Program

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Home " Case Studies " Rwanda Project " Maps & Satellite Images " Satellite Maps of Rwanda Before and After the 1994 Genocide

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After the Rwandan Genocide, the people who refuged to Zaire returned to Rwanda. The Hutus that committed acts of genocide went under trial. The government granted mass amnesty to people who committed smaller crimes.

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On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Habyarimana and Burundi Pres. Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down over Kigali; the ensuing crash killed everyone on board. Although the identity of the person or group who fired upon the plane has never been conclusively determined, Hutu extremists were originally thought to have been responsible; later there were allegations that FPR leaders were responsible. The next day Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a moderate Hutu, was assassinated. Her murder was part of a campaign to eliminate moderate Hutu or Tutsi politicians, with the goal of creating a political vacuum and thus allowing for the formation of the interim government of Hutu extremists that was inaugurated on April 9. Over the next several months the wave of anarchy and mass killings continued, in which the army and Hutu militia groups known as the Interahamwe (“Those Who Attack Together”) and Impuzamugambi (“Those Who Have the Same Goal”) played a central role. The Tutsi-led FPR responded by resuming their fight and were successful in securing most of the country by early July. Later that month a transitional government was established, with Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu, as president and Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, as vice president.

Rwanda genocide of 1994
Skulls of victims on display at a church where they had sought refuge during the Rwanda genocide of 1994. The site now serves as the Ntarama Genocide Memorial, Ntarama, Rwanda.
Scott Chacon

During the genocide more than 800,000 civilians, primarily Tutsi, were killed. As many as 2,000,000 Rwandans, both Hutu and Tutsi, fled, most of them into eastern Zaire (after 1997 called the Democratic Republic of the Congo); the great majority returned to Rwanda in late 1996 and early 1997. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), established by the United Nations Security Council to try the tens of thousands (mostly Hutu) who had committed acts of genocide in 1994, began trying its first cases in 1995. The tremendous number of people to be tried resulted in an inability to proceed in a timely manner, and in 2000 tens of thousands of prisoners continued to await trial. In 2001 the government proposed trying the majority of cases through the traditional gacaca legal system; the gacaca courts were inaugurated in 2002 and began operating in phases over the next several years before being closed in 2012. The ICTR formally closed in December 2015. The government also periodically granted mass amnesty to prisoners accused of lesser crimes. For additional coverage of the genocide, see Rwanda genocide of 1994.

Regional conflict

Meanwhile, in late 1996 Rwanda’s military forces entered neighbouring Zaire to expel Hutu extremists, who had fled there after the genocide and were using that country as a base for launching attacks on Rwanda. Frustrated by the lack of support from Zairean president Mobutu Sese Seko regarding these efforts, Rwanda’s troops also intervened in the rebellion taking place in that country: along with Ugandan troops, they lent crucial support to rebel Laurent Kabila, to whom Mobutu eventually relinquished power in 1997. Little more than a year after Kabila became president of what was by then known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda again cited frustration with that country’s government over the issue of Hutu extremists and lent support to rebel factions attempting to overthrow Kabila. Because of the number of African countries that intervened in Congo’s civil war to support either Kabila or the rebels, the conflict was referred to as Africa’s “first world war.” Rwanda faced much international criticism over its involvement in the war, including a suspension of foreign aid. After many attempts at resolution, a peace agreement was reached in 2002 that provided for the withdrawal of Rwandan troops from Congo in exchange for the disarmament and repatriation of Hutu extremist rebels in Congo.

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On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Habyarimana and Burundi Pres. Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down over Kigali; the ensuing crash killed everyone on board. Although the identity of the person or group who fired upon the plane has never been conclusively determined, Hutu extremists were originally tho…

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ud4BhLpU9JBvMsPN2p4TKWQjzieIfK25IGDwStzNDtE/edit

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FF37-Hyr_cPrrIkRB4r_tXQIQYJYM7-69mWTqCMY-pI/edit

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This first hand experience has a woman talking about how her life got flipped upside down because of the Genocide. She had to use bushes as cover because no one would let them in to seek refuge. They were eventually captured and raped many times but they escaped and they were saved.