Wednesday, 1 June 2011

How the Genocide has affected children in Rwandan Society


Of the 800,000 people that were killed, 300,000 of them were children [1].
The Genocide did more than kill a large fraction of the Rwandan population, its ruined the entire society as a whole. And as a result, only 20% of Rwanda's population are males, leaving many families absent of fathers and male figures to thousands of children. To add to that many families were killed, and helped create thousands of orphans in the country - entire lineages were removed from history. More than 2 million Hutu's participated in the mass slaughter and because of this , it was hard to prosecute people because of the sheer scale. So the murderers, and rapists continue to walk the streets while children take their routine walk to school everyday. To be a child witnessing all those atrocities had also been psychologically scarring, leaving many kids with long term post-traumatic stress; becoming incredibly anti-social, in a constant state of fear or aggressive towards anyone. They continue to live in a society where they believe it could happen again, and have to leave their homes in the same state of fear despite increased security and Tutsi majority. Reintegration continues to be a problem because survivors, live in houses neighboring their rapists or attempted murders.



Despite a few instances in economic growth in Rwanda, it still continues to live in poverty. With a high poverty rate, many homes continue to live without the basic necessities of life. Education, is still a problem where a mere 17% of the youth population are still unable to reach secondary schooling. According to a human development index created in 2010 by the United Nations, Rwanda sits at #150 in terms of life expectancy, education, and gross national income at a level of low human development[2]. The Hutu expected a better future once the Tutsi's were removed, but if you look at the state of the country now, the country is still struggling to rebuild and grow.

Signs of growth
A group known as Ndih
o-Revivo, has helped and is helping the orphaned children of the genocide to grow within a family oriented atmosphere by coupling them with single mothers who have lost their children or putting them in houses with other orphans to help one another. In order to prevent the genocide from starting again, Rwanda has banned any ethnic violence or any mention of any ethnic identity. To everyone in the country, everyone and anyone is considered a "Rwandan" not a Tutsi or a Hutu . Aid in Rwanda has moved quickly from emergency assistance to long term economical development programs. Despite continuing to struggle to rebuild, Rwanda is seeing strides of rapid development: in education with the literacy rate rising from 58% in 1991 to 78% 2009[3], plans to provide internet bandwidth throughout the country have been set by the government making it one of the most technologically superior countries in Africa[4] and has seen a 7.5 growth rate in the economy in 2010 [5]



[1] http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/rwanda_genocide.html
[2] http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2010_EN_Table1_reprint.pdf
[3] http://data.worldbank.org/country/rwanda
[4] http://www.computerworld.co.ke/articles/2008/10/27/rwanda-targets-two-fiber-cables-cheaper-bandwidth
[5] http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/seeds-for-higher-growth-in-rwanda