March 28, 2024

In loving memory of Sifa Nsengimana

November 25, 2012 I just received the heartbreaking news that my beloved friend and inspiration, Sifa Nsengimana, has been killed in a car accident in South Africa. Death is hard to handle no matter the circumstances, but for this world to lose someone who had survived so much, who had managed to see the worst […]

Alex Meixner: Ongoing recalibration

Following a series of posts by Tim Nonn and Rob Crilly, today’s contribution comes from Alex Meixner – Senior Director for Policy and Government Relations at Save Darfur. In this quite lengthy post, Meixner deals with the question of how U.S.-based  advocates can maintain political strength, as well as the policy question of what that […]

Gacaca decision

Earlier this month I attended an all-day Gacaca court appeal by former sous Préfet Béatrice Nirere against her conviction on genocide charges leading to a sentence of life imprisonment with “special conditions” (isolation).  As I commented, during the first day of the appeal the case against her consisted primarily of hearsay evidence, if that. With […]

“Not all people are bad”

In an earlier post about orphans of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda moving ‘beyond survival‘ at the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village, I mentioned a song they had written and performed at the village opening. The students,who have been learning English for just six months, have made a translation of the song from its original Kinyarwanda […]

Gacaca up close

On February 24 this year, Béatrice Nirere was sentenced by a Gacaca court to life imprisonment with “special conditions” (isolation) for her involvement in planning the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi population in Rwanda. This week, I sat in an over-crowded stifling room (despite glassless windows, no fresh air made it through due to the […]

Podcast:Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre

In this 20-minute podcast from the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, I speak with two of the staff that work there: One, a survivor of the 1994 genocide, who now guides visitors around the memorial, and another from the Aegis Trust in the U.K. In addition to walking listeners through the exhibition, (documenting the pathways to […]

From Kigali

After the killing has ceased, and order has been restored: How do you make it right again? This is the question addressed in a new film, My Neighbor, My Killer, according to the article about it in the NYT this week. It’s also the question that I can’t stop thinking about as I walk through […]