Human and socio-emotional consequences

1Counting what was lost

Historians begin with evidence. Read these two sources about the human cost of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, which lasted from 7 April to mid-July 1994, about 100 days.

"More than one million people are estimated to have perished."

Source A. United Nations, Outreach Programme on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, "Historical background".

The Government of Rwanda's count of the victims of the genocide is 1,074,017 people.

Source B. Count of victims by the Ministry of Local Government (MINALOC), as published by the National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG), whose work is now carried out by the Ministry of National Unity and Civic Engagement (MINUBUMWE).

Analysing the sources. Source A is an international organisation and gives an estimate; Source B is a national count, made by going from place to place and recording victims. Both lead to the same conclusion: more than one million people were killed in about 100 days. The victims were overwhelmingly Tutsi, targeted only because they were Tutsi. Hutu and others who opposed the genocide, or who tried to protect Tutsi, were also killed. A careful count matters because each number was a person with a name, and because exact evidence is the strongest answer to anyone who tries to deny or minimise the genocide.

2Human consequences

• Loss of life on a massive scale. Babies, children, women, men and the elderly were killed. Some families were wiped out completely, so that no one was left to remember them.
• Widows and orphans. Many women lost their husbands and children, and many children lost one or both parents. Survivors had to care for children who were not their own.
• Child-headed households. Where no adult survived, older children became the heads of their families while still at school age.
• Injury and disability. Many survivors were left with lasting wounds and disabilities that made work and study harder.
• Sexual violence. Sexual violence was used as a weapon of the genocide. The United Nations estimates that 150,000 to 250,000 women were raped. Many were left with lasting health problems, including HIV, and with deep trauma.
• Displacement. Homes were destroyed and people fled. When the genocidal forces were defeated in July 1994, they pushed very large numbers of Hutu civilians to flee with them into neighbouring countries (Lesson 2).
• Loss of skills. Teachers, doctors, nurses, civil servants and farmers were killed, and others had fled or were later imprisoned. Schools, hospitals and offices had too few trained people to reopen.

3How one consequence leads to another

Consequences do not stand alone. The flowchart shows how the loss of parents led, step by step, to problems that lasted for years.

4Socio-emotional consequences

• Trauma and mental illness. Many survivors live with grief, nightmares, fear and depression. The memories often return during the commemoration period that begins on 7 April each year.
• Broken trust. Many victims were killed by people they knew: neighbours, colleagues and even relatives by marriage. Survivors and perpetrators returned to live on the same hills, which made trust very hard to rebuild.
• Loneliness and loss of identity. Survivors who lost their whole family lost the people who knew their story, their land and their traditions.
• Guilt and shame. Families of perpetrators also carry shame and silence, and their children may grow up with questions they cannot ask.
• Effects on the next generation. Children born after 1994 can be affected by their parents' trauma, which is why healing is a long-term task.

A source on mental health. In 2018 the Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC) carried out a national mental health survey of 19,110 people from the general population and 1,271 genocide survivors. The chart compares two of its findings.

Analysing the chart. Survivors were almost three times as likely as the general population to have major depression (35.0% against 12.0%), and nearly eight times as likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD (27.9% against 3.6%). Twenty-four years after the genocide, its emotional wounds were still clearly visible.

5Survivors rebuild together

Survivors did not only suffer; they organised. IBUKA ("remember"), the umbrella organisation of survivors' associations, was founded in 1995. AVEGA Agahozo, an association of genocide widows, was also founded in 1995 and supported women with health care, counselling and income projects. AERG, the association of student survivors, was founded in 1996 at the National University of Rwanda; its members formed "artificial families" in which older students cared for younger ones. These groups show resilience: turning shared loss into mutual support.

6Discuss

Why might the anniversary of a terrible event bring back trauma even many years later? What can you, your class and your school do to support survivors respectfully during the commemoration period?