Thank you for inviting me, and thank you for looking into this very important issue that's often ignored.
I was able to travel to Rwanda last year. I had been there a few times before to teach journalism, but this time I went as a journalist. I applied for and received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to do my stories. Unfortunately, that journalism grant has been cut. That might be a suggestion for the government: to give journalists some money to be able to do these kinds of jobs, because certainly our own newspapers and media outlets don't have that kind of money. All that money goes to the CEOs.
My project was to look at the state of mental health in Rwanda 20 years after the genocide. In particular, I was interested in the next generation, the kids that were born during or shortly after the genocide who would be turning 20 years old. What I discovered was an entire group of the population. Despite what things look like on the surface in Rwanda, in many ways it's a success story in Africa, partly due to a mini dictatorship of Kagame. He certainly can be criticized, but he's done a lot to rebuild the country. On the surface it's clean and people are working, and things are developing, but if you scratch that surface what you discover is a very troubled population.
Some of the kids I talked to had been born after their mothers had been raped during the genocide. As you probably know, rape was used as a weapon during the killings in those 100 days of 1994. What I found was that the treatment or the care of these young people was quite spotty. If they were lucky enough to fall into the hands of a small NGO, say from the States, or even a local one, they were able to get some kind of therapy, or someone to pay for their university education. Others who had grown up with these very damaged mothers were extremely damaged themselves. There was one young woman, Angelique. I was interviewing her mother and her mother described what had happened to her during the genocide. She had this horrible, traumatic reaction as she told me her story. Her daughter, who had been born of one of these rapes, just sat there completely cold and unable to react to her mother's pain. Both of them were very much in pain. I don't think it would take that much; I think they just need people to talk to.
There was a very impressive young man from Rwanda who started an organization called Best Hope Rwanda. I've kept in touch with him. He's forever looking for funding and help, because he sees in these women and their children—now adult children—people who are in need of support, psychological and in many ways financial, but mostly psychological. He has started a group therapy session. He has really no experience or expertise himself, but he brings these women together with their kids and he lets them talk, which seems to be extremely helpful for them.
Another is an American Rwandan who started a group called Step Up! She got into the country quite a while ago, early on after the genocide. You can tell that the women her organization has helped are much further along than some of the others I've met. They've created a group where they support each other. They keep bees and they have a sewing cooperative, so they have a way of supporting themselves economically.
One main problem with the kids born from rape is they're not recognized by the government as victims or survivors of the genocide. That's a huge issue. They're seen as the offspring of Hutus, or the génocidaires, or the enemy. They didn't qualify for any kind of educational benefit. That's one big gap that I saw. I think what would help is funding for their post-secondary or even their secondary education.
In terms of other countries that Canada could be helping...as we all know, rape is a weapon of war. It's happening in Congo, in Syria, any place where there's war. Even if there's not war, it tends to be a big issue.
There's certainly need for psychological support in Rwanda. They only have six psychiatrists for the entire country. There are a lot of groups and local Rwandans trying to create more support, where people can just get together and talk about what they've been through. It seems that part of the government's goal in many ways is to bury the past and move on, and declare that they're all Rwandans now, that they're not Hutus and Tutsis, but that denies a lot of the suffering that people experienced.
I'm not an expert in the field at all. I went there. I spent about six weeks to two months talking to people, which isn't easy because there's a huge issue of trust. Nobody trusts anyone in Rwanda. That's probably why there's no corruption: you don't know exactly who it is you're dealing with so you wouldn't dare bribe the person because they might turn you in. Maybe that's something we could use in Quebec a little bit more.
I spent a lot of time talking with people, listening to their pain. Twenty years after, there are a lot of problems. Now they're starting to see in this next generation that never dealt with their pain and especially among the kids of rape, drug abuse and alcoholism, which had never been part of their culture before. That's an unfortunate thing. It's probably partly because of their depression but also because they really don't have anything to do because nobody can pay for their education.
Those were my observations. I don't know, maybe it would be better if you asked me questions.
