Scientists are learning from Rwanda, after the genocide
Post-Genocide Rwanda: a collaborative research programme for addressing the challenges of post-genocide research in the developing world
Timothy Longman, a political scientist at Boston University in Massachusetts and a former worker with Human Rights Watch, went to Africa in 1992 and 1995 to do research on the 1994 Rwandan genocide and says that every genocide is unique. He says there are some common patterns. Researchers can learn a lot from studying cases such as Rwanda, the Holocaust and other genocides, he says. “It helps you to prevent violence from happening in other parts of the world.”
The studies had been conducted only by Western scholars. In the past decade, as discussions of decolonizing research began in academia, Clark started working with the UK-based Aegis Trust, which runs the Kigali Genocide Memorial. An analysis by Clark and his colleagues of 12 relevant journals showed that from 1994 to 2019, just 3.3% of studies on post-genocide Rwanda had been done by scholars from the nation (see go.nature.com/3qapae7). The research, policy and higher education programme was launched with funding from Sweden and the UK.
“There are cultural nuances that have to be told by the very people that go through those experiences,” says Sandra Shenge, who is director of programmes at the Aegis Trust based at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, and former RPHE manager. The grants were modest and each had a small amount. Shenge says the response to the programme was outstanding. More than 500 applications were received by the first call.
After the genocide: what scientists are learning from Rwanda? The case of Jean Damascne Iyamuremye
“In terms of the scale of violence, the scale of disruption, the scale of suffering, they are enormously important events,” says Scott Straus, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.
Some scholars say that studying genocide can yield many benefits, but that it’s up to nations and international bodies to decide if they want to stop them.
In 1994, the nation’s main health organization, Jean Damascne Iyamuremye, remembers his experience at the RBC. I witnessed everything that happened. Iyamuremye was training to become a medical assistant but the genocide made him specialize in mental health. He was a medical worker who supported survivors. “We were like firefighters,” says Iyamuremye, who is now director of the psychiatric unit in the RBC’s mental-health division, which oversees countrywide services.
According to Jansen, Biological studies have a bigger importance than just that. This is what happened, and we want to record that for history. The evidence helps to fight genocide denial, he says.
Source: After the genocide: what scientists are learning from Rwanda
The Rwandan Genocide: What scientists are learning from Rwanda? An analysis by a collaboration between Rwandan psychiatrists and a Belgian neuroscientist
It wasn’t until 2014 that Rwanda had its own school of psychiatry, at the University of Rwanda in Kigali. Only 16 psychiatrists exist in the country, and 13 of them graduated from that facility.
Long-term support for survivors is important, because many can become retraumatized. Iyamuremye says that media reports about violence in nearby parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo can bring back memories. And yearly commemorations that last from April to July, called kwibuka in the national language, Kinyarwanda, bring challenges. Iyamuremye says, “You will see people who are upset, who cry, and they will do it due to the memories that they get from what they experience.”
And researchers have found that even people who weren’t alive during the genocide are suffering. Intergenerational trauma can be a challenge in the country. This needs to be targeted with strong, strong interventions,” says Iyamuremye.
“We found that those mothers who were exposed had around 24 differentially methylated regions, which is really high compared to the control group,” says Clarisse Musanabaganwa, a medical research analyst at the RBC who was part of Mutesa and Jansen’s team. The team discovered that many of the same regions were found in both the mothers and the children of those who were killed during the genocide. The research indicates a way in which trauma can transcend at least one generation, and the researchers suggest that lasting effects could be passed down through multiple generations through a mechanism of epigenetic inheritance.
They were hoping to start a bigger study with the help of a Belgian neuroscientist. The pair, with the help of US partners, won funding for their investigations from the US National Institutes of Health.
Source: After the genocide: what scientists are learning from Rwanda
Transgenerational inheritance: a new perspective on genocide in Rwanda and the case of Tutsi, Herero and Waka
“I’m not aware of any really convincing case where the transgenerational inheritance — inheritance of methylation patterns — has been demonstrated,” says Timothy Bestor, a molecular biologist in Gaylordsville, Connecticut, who holds an emeritus position at Columbia University in New York City.
Some of the benefits of their work can be seen by the two people. The study participants showed an increase in resilience after the scientists talked with them about their trauma affecting their children. For instance, if survivors’ children were performing poorly in school, parents now saw a possible reason. The researchers could support children with psychotherapy. They now understand why this is happening to their children.
More than 5,000 Tutsi were murdered at Ntarama, among them babies, children and pregnant women, many of whom were raped before they were killed, says Evode Ngombwa, site manager at the Ntarama Genocide Memorial, one of six sites in Rwanda that commemorate the atrocity. People bribe the perpetrators so that they could choose which way to kill them. He says that they could choose to be shot instead of killing them with machetes. 6,000 people are buried in mass graves because of the discovery of more remains each year.
At IRIBA, Mugiraneza knows about documenting the events of 1994. But she also strives to collect evidence of life before. “The marriages. The songs about love. The stories, the buildings, the proverbs, they are all wonderful, but they are seen as trivial.
The centre, she says, is designed “to support the process of reappropriating the past”. To think about genocide, “we must dare to seek humanity where humanity has been denied”.
It’s difficult to study atrocities. “Research involves talking to survivors who have endured unimaginable horror and putting yourself in the position to listen and hear and be empathetic,” says David Simon, who directs the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Still, scholars say that, through these studies, they are developing a broader understanding by identifying similarities among different genocides. These include the genocide of the Armenian people in 1915, and the Herero and Waka people in 1904, which took place before the end of the 19th century.
Researchers said that all of them had the same ingredients. The first is racializing members of society and identifying an ‘inferior’ segment of the population to be eliminated. Other factors include planning organized massacres and spreading an ideology across a whole society. The involvement of the state and its institutions in the 1994 genocide is a final component, according to historian Vincent Duclert.
The wars in Cte d’Ivy in early 2010 and in the 1990s show why some conflicts that have the ingredients of genocide don’t escalate into them.
One concern among scholars is that there has been less focus on elevating the voices of survivors, given that judicial inquiries focused so much on perpetrators.
Source: After the genocide: what scientists are learning from Rwanda
Rwandan Prisoner’s Relatives: the 21st Year of Freedom Restoration in the French Regime (after Duclert and Macron)
In 2019, he met Duclert, whom French President Emmanuel Macron had commissioned to conduct a study on France’s role in the genocide, owing in part to the French government’s support of Rwanda’s pre-genocide Hutu government. In 2021, Duclert presented his 1,000-page report12, which concluded that French authorities saw evidence of a coming genocide as early as 1990 but didn’t take enough measures to stop it.
Mukagasana’s husband and children were killed. When she reached safety at the Hôtel des Mille Collines — featured in the 2004 film Hotel Rwanda — one of the first things she wanted was a pen and paper to record what had happened.
I have not yet spoken at length about what those years in a Rwandan prison were like, or about the daily reality for Rwandan political prisoners who, like me, found themselves behind bars for exercising their freedom of expression. It has been a long year of physical and emotional recovery that has allowed me finally to put pen to paper again, and I expect the healing process will last the rest of my life.
