A safe place to call home: Securing the right of Rwandan genocide survivors to resettlement outside Rwanda

from Noam Schimmel's article in The Journal Of Humanitarian Assistance:

Genocide survivors in Rwanda have great difficulty receiving refugee status and right of asylum to allow them to settle outside of the country. The standard reply that they receive when making queries about the possibility of immigrating to Europe, Canada, or the United States is that there is no longer persecution on the basis of ethnicity in Rwanda, and thus there is no legal merit to their request.

It is true that there is no government sanctioned persecution on the basis of ethnicity in Rwanda today. However, social persecution, discrimination, marginalization, threats, and intimidation towards survivors of the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi prevail on a popular level amongst many Rwandans.

Genocide survivors are targeted for physical and psychological torture and have been attacked and killed in various parts of the country. Fifteen years after the genocide many lack physical and psychological security.

Apr 09, 2010 Country:Rwanda, Region: Africa, National Reconciliation

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Restorative justice and the Rwandan genocide

from Lisa Rea's interview with Dan Van Ness in UNICRI's Freedom from Fear magazine:

Do you see healing occurring in the victims? And in the offenders as well? How does the community respond?

The healing process is a long and involved one. I think that Umuvumu Tree Project has helped in that process in several ways.

Apr 07, 2010 Country:Rwanda, Region: Africa, National Reconciliation, Correspondent:Lisa Rea

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