Rwandan Genocide Reawakened, Then Reshaped CRS

By Kai T. Hill

The genocide in Rwanda cost Nathalie Piraino nearly her entire family.

She lost more than 100 relatives during the bloodshed. Her beloved mother, a farmer who loved to hug people, was among those slaughtered. All but 2 of her 10 siblings were killed, including her brother, who was tortured for hours on end. Nathalie is sure more were killed. But it became too painful to keep counting, she says.

The 1994 conflict took the lives of approximately 800,000 people, according to the United Nations.

There was not much that Nathalie could do from her home in the United States but pray and send money for her sister—who was taking refuge in a church basement—to buy off killers each day.

"I knew that they would kill, but not until nothing was left. When you lose your entire family, you really don't have much left. You don't have any roots. There is no place to call home anymore," says Nathalie.

Nathalie returned to an eerily different Rwanda a year later. People were either delirious or devoid of emotion. "No one wanted to cry," she says.

Upon returning to her village just outside of the capital city of Kigali, Nathalie says, she found the walls and altar of her family's church still stained with blood. The roads home were eerily unfamiliar. Fields once lush with vegetation were barren. Crops and livestock had vanished. Her mother's home was burned to the ground. She had not even a remnant of her mother's possessions to treasure.

"I know how they were killed, so all of those memories were running in front of me like a movie. I could see people going crazy because Rwanda is so small and everyone knows everyone," she recalls in the quiet, sunlit chapel of Catholic Relief Services.

Our agency, she says, carried her family through desperate times long before she decided to become a member of our staff. Having worked in the small country for nearly 50 years, the agency has seen our Rwandan brothers and sisters through turbulent times, but none as grave as the 100-day genocide.

"It brought us to our knees, but out of that, a positive transformation happened. It was so cataclysmic that the agency's genetic makeup changed," says Michael Wiest, then-director of CRS' Overseas Operations division.

A New Era of Social Justice

CRS was one the first agencies to return to Rwanda after the genocide. We had lost both staff and close friends. It was a time of distress, as well as a lot of prayer, for CRS.

The scale of this tragedy—along with the need to adapt to a post-cold-war world—prompted CRS to reshape our approach to development and humanitarian outreach in accordance with the principles of Catholic social teaching.

From then on, in addition to traditional humanitarian efforts, we would carry out programs that promote peace, justice and reconciliation. We would help to prevent conflicts—not just deal with their consequences.

"In Africa we saw ourselves principally as a socioeconomic agency, so we saw the ethnic and religious tension as political issues that needed to be resolved by someone else. But April 1994 [when the genocide began] was the crucible in time when the agency was reborn and turned into something grander," Wiest says.

CRS' new strategy incorporated principles known to many Catholics as Integral Human Development. It means CRS now assesses social, economic, cultural and political structures when planning programs and responding to crises.

"Through this agency reconstruction we realized that our Catholic, faith-based identity is something we should have held on to," says Wiest, who now serves as executive vice president for CRS Charitable Giving.

Healing a Beautiful Country

Nathalie returned to Rwanda in 2005 to volunteer at a CRS-supported orphanage, where children were left with emotional and physical scars from the slaughter. Looking back at the Rwanda that once was, Nathalie marvels at the country's shared culture and holds dear friendships that cross ethnic lines. Her love for the land and people is her footing for peace—something that she says requires us to "look into everybody's face and try to see God in that face" regardless of differences.

"Rwanda is one of the blessed countries in Africa, where we have the same culture, the same religion, the same food, speak the same language, we live in the same neighborhood, we go to the same school. Unfortunately what happened to us is a tragedy but if you look back in the composition of the population, we are one people," she explains.

Our Work in Rwanda

CRS has worked in Rwanda since 1963. The agency has provided emergency assistance and food aid and promoted self-help initiatives. CRS was also directly involved in emergency programs after the outbreak of civil conflicts in 1990 and 1994.

Kai T. Hill is an associate web producer for CRS. She works at the Baltimore headquarters.