Psychological Consequences Of The Rwanda Genocide

On 7th, April, 2004, the world observed a moment of silence to remember the victims in the Rwanda genocide. As the world remember the 10 year anniversary of the genocide, the country continued to live with the devastating affects of the brutal event. Some of the most significant aftermaths were the the lasting children suffrage, disproportion of men and women population, and the extreme slow recovery of the economic and education system. Rwanda, even now, is never fully healed from the massacre, and below show a detailed explanation of the consequences it still has upon the people and society of the country. As the genocide ended in 1994, approximately 800,000 people had been murdered, this meant there would be a vast majority of children …show more content…
Even today, the number of orphans in Rwanda is still a very large number mostly due to HIV that spread tremendously during the genocide due to rape. Both children and adult faced devastating psychological damage, however, the damage was worse to children and had a very significant impact on these children who have observed atrocities, forced to commit them and being the victims of attack. These children were result and remained disfigured and handicapped for the rest of their lives, which have led to many struggles in daily lives not only mentally but also physically. In 1994, a new word has appeared in the Rwanda vocabulary specifically describing the psychological problems that were resulted in the genocide. The word “ Ihahamuke” is used to describe post traumatic stress and chronicle traumatic grief, and the symptoms are mainly constant fear, anti-social behaviors, aggression and irritation towards everyone, etc. Therefore, one of the main consequences of the genocide in Rwanda is the lasting children suffrage. Another aftermath of the genocide is men and women’s population being extremely disproportional. Regarding to the general thrust of the human rights reportage, on the …show more content…
The economy and education system are extremely slow in recover. Since the genocide had ended over 1 million out of 7.6 million people’s lives, the country sinked into extreme poverty and starvation. The reason is that the lack of workforce in all industries after the genocide prevented the development and recovery of the economics. This led to further poverty and making poor households even poorer, therefore, the majority of children were unable to receive any education. As mentioned, the lack of workforce also applied in the education system, meaning the inadequacy to offer any education. There were not enough teachers or any teaching resources, therefore, even if the children were able to afford for an education, there was no one to teach them. The two systems are complementarity, the poor economy resulted in poverty and lack of teaching resources, thus, the education system failed to recover. Since children were not being well educated, they were unable to help the recovery of the economics system. According to this cycle, it’s not hard to acknowledge and draw conclusion that education and economic systems would be in slow recovery. Even until now, Rwanda is still one of the countries that suffers from poverty the