April 7, 2024 marks the 30the anniversary of the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsis. The wounds remain raw for those who escaped death. Among them are the children born from rape and their mothers. Thirty years later, these survivors take stock of the social injustices that still form their reality.
As academics and practitioners at McGill University, we are interested in the intergenerational and psychosocial impacts of genocides and their colonial roots. While annual commemorations take place in Rwanda and abroad every year, young people born from sexual violence are very rarely considered and their right to be seen, recognized and protected remains neglected.
The so-called “children of hate” are now adults and speak of the extent of the burdens they have inherited. In this commemorative period, we are looking at the question of forgotten needs that were raised during research interviews conducted in Rwanda with the latter.
Even today, the effects of rape are felt. Sexual violence used as a weapon of war had clear intentions: to degrade, humiliate and destroy the Tutsis by causing profound physical, emotional, psychological and socio-economic after-effects. These after-effects remain well anchored, and the marginalization passed down from mother to child imprisons them in a vicious circle making it difficult to access a life free from injustice, difficulties having taken root at the time of family reunifications with obscure turns, women preparing to give birth to the children of those responsible for the death of their loved ones. Participants in our study in Rwanda reported: “All my friends hated me because I was pregnant. Everyone close to me who survived hated me — even my mother. They told me to abort. »
These pregnant women testified to their heartbreak in the face of emotional and family dilemmas regarding the choice of moving forward with their pregnancy or ending it. In the absence of legal access to abortion, many have given birth in secret, abandoned their newborns or committed infanticide. Others welcomed their child as a gift from God, and some were able to count on the support of their loved ones.
“I accepted my pregnancy as it was. Everyone was dead, and I felt the need to take care of her as she was now my only family. »
While the emotional burden linked to motherhood was described as marked by ambivalence and distress, the socio-economic difficulties following the community reintegration of these women were aggravated by the interruption of their educational career.
“We were a group of ten girls who had been raped, and I was the only one who became pregnant […] All the girls, we were together, they finished their studies and now they are working. When I see them, I hide. When I think that I was the brilliant student. I feel sad and lose my morale. »
In the absence of financial means and to regain a level of social acceptance, some women explained that they had (re)married in order to obtain the support of a partner. With the hope of lightening their economic burden and regaining an acceptable social status, many say they found themselves in situations where they themselves had to provide for their child’s needs, and suffered psychological, physical and sexual abuse at their hands. respect, perpetrated by their new husband.
“People who come to the house consider my daughter to be my sister. When you ask my husband how many children he has, he always says two, while for me it’s three. He never pays his school fees; he says it’s my responsibility. »
Children born from rape often find themselves scapegoats for the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsis. Many speak of the weight of their exclusion, colored by their mother’s painful past. Their challenges are compounded by a series of obstacles preventing them from achieving their own financial, community and identity independence.
The exclusion extends to the social and financial support systems in place for genocide survivors—another sphere in which young survivors with a birth date of 1995 are ineligible, rendering them once again marginalized.
The Rwandan genocide against the Tutsis caused devastating losses and created indelible scars. The consequences are not the same for everyone, and young adults born from rape fight every day to escape the mode of survival generated by the vicious circle of their heritage. Without recognition and action, the cycle of violence, exclusion and discrimination will not end.
This distant reality, however, resembles that of Canada, also at the dawn of thirty years since the closure of the last native residential school. Like the Tutsis, the First Nations, Inuit and Métis are still experiencing the consequences of cultural genocide. Social policies with colonial influences continue to duplicate the mechanisms of racial injustice and deepen disparities in the very exercise of fundamental human rights.
War and genocide continue to affect millions of children and families. It is necessary to turn our gaze towards the collective and individual responsibility that falls to us in the face of the long and arduous process of reconciliation.