Genocide, the attempt to eliminate a people, is a very complex and layered process, and the reaction to that can be as complex and layered as the act itself. The immediate reaction is to help those who have been afflicted, the women and the families who endured these atrocities, but from some of the reading I've come across, the ones who have fallen through the cracks are the 20-odd thousand children who were born of these rapes. In many cases, governments—and I can't speak for the Canadian government—put their efforts into helping the women who were raped and their communities. But the children who were born of these acts were not considered victims of genocide. Thus many of the programs that were available did not include them, and they could not access these programs.
These children are now 19 or 20 years old. They will become the parents of the future communities in Rwanda. My interest is in what we can learn from them, from what they experienced, and also in cases of mothers who could not look at their children because of the reminder of what they had gone through and what they were. Hutus would not accept them because they were born of Tutsi mothers, and Tutsis would not accept them because they were children born of “genocidists”, to coin a phrase.
What, if anything, have we done and what can we do to better prepare ourselves for our intervention in future cases? This is still happening in the DRC. Using rape as a weapon of conflict is a very targeted thing. What can we glean from this horrible experience to better prepare ourselves to help those who will need our help in the future?