Aftermath
There was no triumphant victory. The country had been ransacked. There was not a penny in the public coffers. There were no offices intact, no chairs, no desks, no paper, no telephones, nothing at all.
The streets of Kigali were almost empty. From a previous population of 300,000, there were 50,000 people left and half of these were displaced. Their condition was disastrous, and they lacked adequate food and clean water. Outside the capital, whole families and communities had been destroyed. Livestock had been killed and crops laid to waste. Everywhere there were ditches filled with rotting bodies. |
pOssible GenocidesThe Rwandan genocide killed 800,000 people in 100 days. Africa’s fastest, intentionally planned genocide. It was a glaring example of the failure of international institutions like the UN and of leading nation-states like the US, Belgium, France, and the UK to prevent or stop genocide. It was a shocking reminder that genocide has happened again and again since 1945. Genocide Watch considers Rwanda still to be ethnically Polarized , but the Rwandan government and civil society are making concerted efforts in schools and churches to overcome this polarization. Rwanda has one of the most systematic genocide education programs in the world.
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