in Rwanda, the still fragile mental health of “children of the genocide”

In Rwanda, 30 years after the Tutsi genocide, the trauma is still alive among survivors. But it also exists in many children born after the massacres.

Rwanda commemorates from Sunday April 7 for 100 days the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsis in 1994. 100 days of mourning, like the 100 days during which nearly a million people were massacred throughout the country.

Thirty years later, the trauma is abysmal among survivors of the killings, post-traumatic stress, depressive disorders… but also among young people born after the genocide. Three out of five residents are under 25 years old.

At 21, Kenny has not experienced the atrocities perpetrated against the Tutsis 30 years ago and yet they haunt him. “I am shocked, speechless”, says the student during the commemorations, in the stands of a downtown basketball court. He lost his grandmother, an uncle and several friends of his parents. He often breaks down. “Sometimes I cry, sometimes I feel bad, I try to fight these feelings, to be strong, because the little ones after me are counting on me.”

“A dark cloud above me”

Frankly, Amanda describes having completely plunged into depression. “It was at the age of 16 that my mental health problems started, during Covid it was the worst time, it was only recently that I came out of it, she says. At university, it was liters and liters of alcohol, marijuana. Without it, I couldn’t go to class or fall asleep. It’s like there’s a dark cloud hanging over me all the time.”

This former candidate for Miss Rwanda wonders. “I don’t know where it comes from, I come from a good family, understanding, educated, depression we talked about.” Many friends around her are also affected. “They drink every day, especially if they are in a group, there is a real anxiety about socializing in my generation and it is a taboo subject.” This observation and her own story led her to found the NGO Humeka (“breathe” in Kinyarwanda), which organizes awareness campaigns among students.

Learn to talk to yourself and love yourself

“I come from far away”, confides Jean-Claude while adjusting his tie in a cafe in Kigali. This banking executive will be 30 years old this year. His mother was raped by several Hutu militiamen, Jean-Claude was the result of one of these rapes. “Relationships with my mother were difficult for a long time. She was not doing well. At school, I was asked who my father was. When I asked her the question, she refused to answer, got angry or called me a name one day and then another the next day. Since I was little, I have known that there is a problem, she has a disability because of sexual violence, she can no longer see. I feel the perpetual pain of what she experienced.” Jean-Claude says he followed mother-child workshops with his mother to learn how to talk to each other and love each other.

Émilienne Mukansoro, a survivor who became a pioneer of psychotherapy with female survivors, constantly faces this difficulty in saying this. “There is dignity, modesty, but also the fact that it is unspeakable, she confides. The neighbor was your killer, your father was your killer, your uncle was your killer. It’s so intimate! We’re talking about women who killed or gave their children to the killer.”

This questions the way in which families and generations born after the genocide are constructed, analyzes Wenda Franjoux, a clinical psychologist in Kigali, who receives many thirty-year-olds for consultations. “This segment of the population today is the one who is old enough to build their life on an emotional level, to form couples and to have children. What is their attachment style, what is happening in the trauma in the way they take care of their children on a daily basis? On all of this, the human and social sciences must really continue to shed light because there is a gap at the moment.”

Following the Tutsi genocide in 1994, the country only had one psychiatrist. Since then, associations, trauma counselors and support groups have multiplied. The country has developed a decentralized mental health service, even if there are still gaps, concedes Sandrine Umutoni, Secretary of State for Youth. “Today we are still researching: how to train more people, how to have more psychiatrists? This applies to the general world of medicine or health, where we are still understaffed.”

“When we come to doctors, even general practitioners, by number of individuals, the number of doctors is often lower than the world standard. We see that we do not have enough.”

Sandrine Umutoni, Secretary of State for Youth

at franceinfo

For Wenda Franjoux, the other issue is that the young people concerned feel authorized to express their vulnerabilities and ask for help. “I think that the collective discourse around reconstruction has been so significant, analyzes the psychologist, that today, these young people are very imbued with this culture of: ‘We must move forward, we must form a community, we must move forward’. And for that, we have to show that we are functional, so we don’t complain. We cut ourselves off a little from our emotions. And that also means that the day we are less well, for a while, we can not pay attention to it at all.” Because beyond national reconciliation there is reconciliation with oneself.