Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre

The Kigali Genocide Memorial commemorates the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. The remains of over 250,000 people are interred there. There is a visitor centre for students and those wishing to understand the events leading up to the events of 1994. The Centre is a permanent memorial to those who fell victim to the genocide and serves as a place in which the bereaved could bury their family and friends. The Centre is managed and run by the Aegis Trust and the Kigali City Council.LocationThe memorial and the memorial centre are in Gisozi which is a ten-minute journey from the centre of Kigali.BackgroundIn April 1994 reports of systematic mass murder within Rwanda began to filter out of Rwanda and circulate throughout the world. Sadly, little was done to halt the mass killing. To outsiders the genocide was represented as tribal-based ethnic violence, with the Tutsis the victims and the Hutus as the perpetrators. Precisely how many people were actually murdered may never be known; estimates vary between 500,000 and over a million. The number of people killed is widely accepted as being somewhere close to 800,000.HistoryIn 2000, the Kigali City Council began to construct the shell of a building, which was eventually to become the Memorial Centre. Aegis was invited to turn the aspiration for a centre into a reality. The Aegis Trust then began to collect data from across the world to create the three graphical exhibits. The text for all three was printed in three languages, designed in the UK at the Aegis head office by their design team, and shipped to Rwanda to be installed.