April 9, 20244:40 PM ET
Three Rwandans under the age of 25 — Ornella Ineza, Kelvin Rwihimba, and Crispin Iradukunda — reflect on what it’s like to grow up in a country that’s been shaped by a genocide.
April 9, 20244:32 PM ET
Enlarge this imageDidas Kayinamura (left) and Rachel Mukantabana (right) talk about the legacy of the Rwandan genocide thirty years later.
Jacques Nkinzingabo/NPR
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Jacques Nkinzingabo/NPR
Didas Kayinamura (left) and Rachel Mukantabana (right) talk about the legacy of the Rwandan genocide thirty years later.
Jacques Nkinzingabo/NPR
Many of us don’t have the opportunity to handpick our neighbors. We buy or rent a place in a neighborhood with good schools or an easy commute.
Some of us become friends with those who live nearby, others of us never talk to our neighbors at all. For most though, we co-exist.
In the midst of a brutal civil war, neighbors killed their neighbors simply because of who they were.
Thirty years ago this month, that wasn’t the case in Rwanda.
We visit a Rwandan village where how neighbors live alongside one another is deliberate, and complicated.
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April 9, 20245:00 AM ET
Enlarge this imageA shattered father recounts his kidnapping and the struggle to negotiate with the kidnappers for the release of his children.
Terna Iwar for NPR
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Terna Iwar for NPR
A shattered father recounts his kidnapping and the struggle to negotiate with the kidnappers for the release of his children.
Terna Iwar for NPR
BWARI, Nigeria — “They pointed their guns through the window of the children’s room while they were sleeping,” says the 49-year-old father of four sons, describing the beginning of a three-month ordeal that has overwhelmed his family. “Then they told them to open the door or they will shoot them.”
In early January, around midnight, 20 men armed with AK-47s and machetes attacked his home in Bwari, a small town surrounded by outcrops of towering granite rocks and forest, on the hilly outskirts of Nigeria’s capital Abuja.
The attackers dragged him and his four sons, ranging in age from 12 to 24 y..
April 8, 20244:40 PM ET
It’s been 30 years since the Rwandan genocide began in 1994. In some places today, survivors of the genocide live side-by-side with perpetrators, so-called reconciliation villages.
April 8, 20246:28 AM ET
Starting in South Africa and finishing in Tunisia, it took Russ Cook 352 days. That’s about 28 miles on average each day — more than a marathon. Cook has in the past run from Istanbul to London.
April 8, 20245:07 AM ET
As Rwanda marks three decades since the genocide, President Paul Kagame says the international community failed them. An estimated 800,000 people were killed by government-backed extremists.
April 7, 20244:42 PM ET
Decades after a genocide that killed nearly 1 million Rwandans, NPR visits a church that was the site of a massacre where 7,000 people were killed, and talk to one man who perpetrated crimes there.
April 7, 20245:38 AM ET
Enlarge this imageFormer US President Bill Clinton, left, and South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa arrive to lay a wreath at a ceremony to mark the 30th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, held at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, in Kigali, Rwanda, Sunday, April 7, 2024. Rwandans are commemorating 30 years since the genocide in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed by government-backed extremists.
Brian Inganga/AP
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Brian Inganga/AP
Former US President Bill Clinton, left, and South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa arrive to lay a wreath at a ceremony to mark the 30th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, held at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, in Kigali, Rwanda, Sunday, April 7, 2024. Rwandans are commemorating 30 years since the genocide in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed by government-backed extremists.
Brian Inganga/AP
KIGALI, Rwanda — Rwandans are commemorating 30 years since the genocide ..
April 5, 20245:01 AM ET
Enlarge this imageThe Nkamira Transit Center in western Rwanda is home to more than 6,000 refugees who fled violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Jacques Nkinzingabo for NPR
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Jacques Nkinzingabo for NPR
The Nkamira Transit Center in western Rwanda is home to more than 6,000 refugees who fled violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Jacques Nkinzingabo for NPR
RUBAVU DISTRICT, Rwanda — The first thing that we noticed at the Nkamira Transit Center was the fact that no matter where we looked, in any direction, there were children.
Kids laying on foam mattresses, stacked on the rocky ground. Kids peeking out in curiosity from behind one of the long, semi-permanent shelters where they live. Kids singing, loudly, inside a big structure where they attend school.
David Rusanjonga is the manager at the camp that sits on the Rwanda side of the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, and sai..
April 3, 20244:20 PM ET
An outbreak of mpox — formerly known as monkeypox — in the Democratic Republic of Congo has health experts concerned as the majority of deaths have been children.