16:00 - 17:30
Room: Muirhead – Room 118
Stream: Raising Children in Times of Hardship
Chair/s:
Caroline Williamson Sinalo, Claver Irakoze
‘Raising Rwanda’s next Generation: Exploring the Issues through Personal Experience’
Claver Irakoze1, Caroline Williamson Sinalo2
1Aegis Trust, Kigali
2University College Cork, Cork

During outbreaks of ethnic violence in Rwanda and particularly during the civil war, Tutsi parents faced the challenges of parenting in exceptionally difficult circumstances. Their families suffered extreme harassment both at work and in school leading many parents, through the desire to protect their children, to exert excessive control over them, punishing them harshly for minor misdeeds and forbidding them from playing with other children: what we term ‘internal persecution’. These children then lived through the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and witnessed the violent deaths of countless friends and family members as well as faced extermination themselves. Many became orphans and spent the rest of their childhood living in alternative family structures. Today they have become adults and are starting families themselves. But having only ever known their parents in times of acute political violence, survivor parents must invent their own moral code when parenting in an attempt to mitigate the long-term impact of the genocide. Irakoze is among parents of Rwanda’s next generation. Born in exile but returning to Rwanda in 1989, he experienced these events first-hand. In the early 1990s he and his family faced daily persecution and, in 1994, at the age of 11, he survived the genocide but lost both of his parents and many other family members. Like others of his generation, Irakoze’s home life changed radically afterwards as his siblings and he were separated into different host families. He is now married with two young children. Through Irakoze’s personal life story, Williamson and Irakoze explore in this paper the challenges faced by survivor parents in Rwanda today and reflect on how this relates to broader processes of peace and reconciliation.


Reference:
Tu-A38 Raising Children 3-P-003
Presenter/s:
Claver Irakoze
Presentation type:
Panel
Room:
Muirhead – Room 118
Chair/s:
Caroline Williamson Sinalo, Claver Irakoze
Date:
Tuesday, 11 September
Time:
16:30 - 16:45
Session times:
16:00 - 17:30