Youth and genocide
From Never Again
An estimated one million people were killed within one hundred days in 1994. The world’s largest exodus—an estimated two million people—walked away from their homes into neighbouring countries. Since the attainment of her independence, the Rwandan youth have always been manipulated by the myopic politicians of the day and get involved in political propaganda based on ethnicity, race, clan and regionalism.
University communities and youth generations were often used as a channel for the transmission of discriminatory political ideologies which only served the personal ends and interests of the politicians.
The political actors have always found the youth to be fertile ground in which to plant their sectarian ideologies; which have had a negative consequence on the valves which had to prevail in the environment where the youth were supposed to acquire a learning of tolerance, mutual respect and solidarity.
It is for this same reason that, to perpetuate the process of alerting and creative means of managing and solving conflicts set forth by the current peace and stability in Rwanda, the young graduates and students from the Rwandan Universities and other International universities are organizing Never Again International into a strong civil society organization with the aim of provoking alternatives to conflict resolution through dialogue. Conflicts are becoming the order of the day in the great lakes region, Africa and the world at large. This will lead to increased participation of youth in resolving conflicts and finding alternatives to conflict.
Never Again wants to profit from the positive consequences of the globalization, by avoiding the negative side. We believe that globalization is more than the forces of liberation of the world market. It may allow people to unite freely their efforts and knowledge to reach on worldwide solutions. It is a great time to ally our efforts in favor of change, a global change, a positive change and a free world.
As Abraham Lincoln said, "We can not avoid the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today". Also the late Ethiopian emperor Haite Selaisiee once pronounced: "in the history it is the inaction of those who should have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most that have made the evil to triumph".
Many people are involved in the domain of conflict management inside the country and around the world. When holocausts happened during and after world wars people did not say "Never Again" and in 1994 genocide happened again. Rwanda's history neither begins on April 7th 1994, nor does it end ten years afterwards. The innumerable and painful consequences of a history of ethnic tensions, repeated human rights abuses and social injustice are part of the country's fabric which only begs a question, "can it happen again, can these crimes against humanity" repeat themselves in this small nation leave alone anywhere else in the world ?"
The only correct response is "Never Again".
