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Serge Gasore’s childhood was a nightmare.
He was a child when the 1994 genocide against Tutsis began in Rwanda and narrowly escaped death on several occasions. His mother was murdered, and he saw his grandmother killed by a grenade attack on a church where Tutsis were hiding.
He spent weeks fleeing Hutu invaders but could not avoid involvement in the war: at the age of nine, he was forced to fight with soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).
Eventually, as an adult, Gasore was able to leave Rwanda and settle in the United States, where he and his wife founded Rwanda Children, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing shelter, food, medical care and education for at-risk children in the country.
Gasore is just one example of thousands of people who are rebuilding their lives, more than three decades after the horrific events of 1994, in which more than a million people – mostly Tutsis, but also Hutu and other groups opposed to the genocide – were systematically murdered in less than three months.
Kwibuka Flame of Hope Tributes to the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda Installed at UN Headquarters.
Along with another survivor, Marcel Mutsindashyaka, who lost 25 members of his family, Mr. Gasore will share his story at a ceremony at UN Headquarters on Tuesday, commemorating the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
Honor ‘stolen dignity’
Ahead of International Day which is celebrated on April 7, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres mourning the victims, including “entire families brutally obliterated,” and honoring their “stolen dignity.”
In his messageGuterres paid tribute to survivors like Gasore, whose resilience, he said, “shows the strength of the human spirit.”
Recalling the failure of the international community to heed the warnings and take urgent action to save lives, Guterres said we must learn from past failures and protect the living “by rejecting hatred, inflammatory rhetoric and incitement to violence.”
Names of victims of the Rwandan Wall Genocide at the Kigali Memorial Center
Warning and education
The April 7 event, along with other commemorations held at UN offices around the world, was coordinated by Outreach Program on the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda and the UNwhich was established by the General Assembly in 2005 to “mobilize civil society to remember and educate the victims of the Rwandan genocide to help prevent future acts of genocide.”
