Summary: This event takes place in Kigali,
Rwanda.
This conference is intended to bring Holocaust survivors,
Armenians, Cambodians, Gypsies, or their children, and other
genocide survivors together with Rwandan survivors in order to
share their experiences, commemorate the victims, seek ways to
improve the lives of survivors after the genocide, and coordinate
their efforts to help ensure that there will be no such crimes
against humanity in the future.
This conference, the first of its kind, will discuss, highlight, and
investigate the effects of genocide in the daily lives of its
survivors. These survivors, many of whom saw their family
members murdered in front of their eyes, continue to suffer the
trauma of such memories. In Rwanda, many survivors ask
themselves whether it makes sense to invest in the future when
one's past has been totally destroyed. They ask themselves
whether the youngest child should attend school when the oldest
was brutally killed just at the time when he or she was to
graduate. They cannot forget that the genocide in Rwanda was
a result of the mass mobilization and participation of most of the
people. In spite of the enormous challenges, the Rwandan
society has to be rebuilt, different communities will have to live
together, and the entire population must commit itself to respect
human lives.
It has the following objectives.
Objective No. 1: Sharing among the survivors' groups
experiences of genocide and of coping with post-genocide life
Objective No. 2: Commemorating the genocide victims
Objective No. 3: Peace building among different communities in
Rwanda
Objective No. 4: Exploring effective ways to meet the survivors’
entitlements to truth, justice, reparations, including restitution,
compensation and rehabilitation.
Objective No. 5: Preventing genocide from happening again and
rebuilding genocide-torn societies to prevent the perpetuation of
life-long and multigenerational effects.
pdf: www.crin.org/docs/resources/Events/RWANDAconference.pdf