Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is highly elevated, giving it the soubriquet "land of a thousand hills", with its geography dominated by mountains in the west and savanna to the southeast, with numerous lakes throughout the country. The climate is temperate to subtropical, with two rainy seasons and two dry seasons each year. Rwanda has a population of over 12.6 million living on 26,338 km2 (10,169 sq mi) of land, and is the most densely populated mainland African country; among countries larger than 10,000 km2, it is the fifth most densely populated country in the world. One million people live in the capital and largest city Kigali.
Human occupation of Rwanda is thought to have begun shortly after the last ice age. By the 11th century, the inhabitants had organized into a number of kingdoms. In the 19th century, Mwami (king) Rwabugiri of the Kingdom of Rwanda conducted a decades-long process of military conquest and administrative consolidation that resulted in the kingdom coming to control most of what is now Rwanda. The colonial powers, Germany and Belgium, allied with the Rwandan court.
The Tutsi, also called Watusi, Watutsi or Abatutsi, are an ethnic group of the African Great Lakes region. They are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group and the second largest of three main ethnic groups in Rwanda and Burundi.
The Rwandan genocide, also known as the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu militias. The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 662,000 Tutsi deaths.
Goma is the capital of North Kivu province in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is located on the northern shore of Lake Kivu, next to the Rwandan city of Gisenyi. The lake and the two cities are in the Albertine Rift, the western branch of the East African Rift system. Goma lies only 13–18 km (8.1–11.2 mi) south of the active Nyiragongo Volcano. The recent history of Goma has been dominated by the volcano and the Rwandan genocide of 1994, which in turn fuelled the First and Second Congo Wars. The aftermath of these events was still having effects on the city and its surroundings in 2010. The city was captured by rebels of the March 23 Movement during the M23 rebellion in late 2012, but it has since been retaken by government forces.
Banyamulenge, also referred to as Nyamurenge and Banyamurenge are a Tutsi community inhabiting the Democratic Republic of the Congo's South Kivu province. The Banyamulenge are culturally and socially distinct from the Tutsi of North Kivu, with most speaking Kinyamulenge, a mix of Kinyarwanda and Kirundi, with specific phonological and morphological features found in the two. Banyamulenge are often discriminated in the DRC due to their Tutsi phenotype, similar to that of people living in the Horn of Africa.
The Kingdom of Rwanda was a kingdom in East Africa which grew to be ruled by a Tutsi monarchy. It was one of the oldest and the most centralized kingdom in the Central and East Africa region. It was later annexed under German and Belgian colonial rule while retaining some of its autonomy. The Tutsi monarchy was abolished in 1961 after ethnic violence erupted between the Hutu and the Tutsi during the Rwandan Revolution which started in 1959. After a 1961 referendum, Rwanda became a Hutu-dominated republic and received its independence from Belgium in 1962.
The Murambi Technical School, now known as the Murambi Genocide Memorial Centre, is situated near the town of Murambi in southern Rwanda.
Rutshuru is a town located in the North Kivu province of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and is headquarters of an administrative district, the Rutshuru Territory. The town lies in the western branch of the Albertine Rift between Lakes Edward and Kivu. The Ugandan border is 15 km east and the Rwandan border is 30 km south-east. Lava flows from the Nyamuragira volcano, 40 km south-west, have come within 7 km of the town in recent years.
The Great Lakes refugee crisis is the common name for the situation beginning with the exodus in April 1994 of over two million Rwandans to neighboring countries of the Great Lakes region of Africa in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. Many of the refugees were Hutu fleeing the predominantly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which had gained control of the country at the end of the genocide. However, the humanitarian relief effort was vastly compromised by the presence among the refugees of many of the Interahamwe and government officials who carried out the genocide, who used the refugee camps as bases to launch attacks against the new government led by Paul Kagame. The camps in Zaire became particularly politicized and militarized. The knowledge that humanitarian aid was being diverted to further the aims of the genocidaires led many humanitarian organizations to withdraw their assistance. The conflict escalated until the start of the First Congo War in 1996, when RPF-supported rebels invaded Zaire and sought to repatriate the refugees.
Kigeli IV Rwabugiri was the king (mwami) of the Kingdom of Rwanda in the mid-nineteenth century. He was among the last Nyiginya kings in a ruling dynasty that had traced their lineage back four centuries to Gihanga, the first 'historical' king of Rwanda whose exploits are celebrated in oral chronicles. He was a Tutsi with the birth name Sezisoni Rwabugiri. He was the first king in Rwanda's history to come into contact with Europeans. He established an army equipped with guns he obtained from Germans and prohibited most foreigners, especially Arabs, from entering his kingdom.
Islam is the largest minority religion in Rwanda, practiced by 2% of the total population according to the 2012 census. Virtually all Muslims in Rwanda are Sunni Muslim. Islam was first introduced into Rwanda by Muslim traders from the East Coast of Africa in the 20th century. Since its introduction, Muslims have been a minority in the territory, while Christianity, was introduced to Rwandans during the colonial period in the beginning of the 20th century, and is now the largest religion in the country.
The Banyarwanda are a mixture of Bantu and Nilotic/Nilo-hamitic ethnic groups. They are primarily found in Rwanda and some adjacent parts of Burundi, DR Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya. Some Banyarwanda live in the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu. Democratic Republic of the Congo, when colonial borders were created by the Europeans, they were put in Belgium Congo. Though, later some who were put in Rwanda just joined their relatives across the fence from Rwanda to work in the Belgian farms in Congo and ended up living there permanently with the other half of their people who were put in Congo by European colonialist. There are also 1 million Banyarwanda in Uganda, where they live in the west of the country; Umutara and Kitara are the centres of their pastoral and agricultural areas.
Sainte-Famille Church is a Catholic church in Kiyovu, downtown Kigali, in Rwanda. It is located on a hill, close to the commercial district of Rugenge. Sainte-Famille Church was the scene of killings during the genocide in April 1994.
Kabgayi is just south of Gitarama in Muhanga District, Southern Province, Rwanda, 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Kigali. It was established as a Catholic Church mission in 1905. It became the center for the Roman Catholic Church in Rwanda and is the site of the oldest cathedral in the country and of Catholic seminaries, schools and a hospital. The church at first supported the Tutsi ruling elite, but later backed the Hutu majority. During the 1994 Rwandan genocide thousands of Tutsis who had taken refuge here were killed. Some survivors admire the courage of many priests who helped them during those difficult days, like Father Evergiste RUKEBESHA and many others. Later, some Hutus including three bishops and many priests were killed by the rebels RPF soldiers. A mass grave beside the hospital is marked by a memorial. Inside the Basilica are kept the bodies of the three bishops killed by FPR rebels. Two of them were refused by the Rwandan government to be transferred in their own cathedrals.
Archbishop André Perraudin, M. Afr. was a Swiss Catholic clergyman who lived in Rwanda for nearly fifty years. He was Archbishop of Kabgayi from 1959 to 1989.
Nyundo is a community in the Rubavu District of Western Province, Rwanda, on the Sebeya River to the east of Gisenyi. It is the location of one of the first Catholic missions to be established in Rwanda, and today is the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Nyundo.
Bwakira is a former commune in western Rwanda. The main town was Birambo. In 1991 the population density was 343 people per square kilometer. During the Rwandan genocide the mayor (burgomaster) of Bwakira ordered mass killings and mass graves to be dug at Birambo.
During the Rwandan genocide of 1994, over the course of 100 days, up to half a million women and children were raped, sexually mutilated, or murdered. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) handed down the first conviction for the use of rape as a weapon of war during the civil conflict, and, because the intent of the mass violence against Rwandan women and children was to destroy, in whole or in part, a particular ethnic group, it was the first time that mass rape during wartime was found to be an act of genocidal rape.
The double genocide theory posits that, during the Rwandan genocide, the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) engaged in a "counter-genocide" against the Hutus. Most scholars of Rwanda, such as Scott Straus and Gerald Caplan, say that RPF violence against Hutus does not fully match the definition of "genocide," considering that it instead consisted of war crimes or crimes against humanity.
