Growing a Collection on Trauma and the 1994 Rwandan Genocide

The world will be commemorating the 18th anniversary of the 1994 Rwandan genocide in the Month of April 2012 although survivors’ mental health and trauma still have a long way to fully be taken care of or addressed. Many survivors of this genocide used to be re-traumatized during the genocide commemoration period that takes place in the month of April of every year. As late as early this year, public institutions charged to oversee the commemoration period were still debating how to best handle survivors who get traumatized during this period. Those that get very traumatized and get attended to during this period are rarely given follow-up sessions to ensure how well they are coping after the official commemoration period in that year comes to an end. Up to the year 2005 when public media in Rwanda were requested to stop airing unedited videos on national television that showed how the militia were hacking and clubbing people to death, commemoration periods became periods for majority of the survivors to be re-traumatized instead of being a moment to encourage healing. Re-traumatization was mainly as a result of watching these videos being played over and over again on television for the entire commemoration period. Radio also replayed incendiary statements by hate media over and over again. Despite the media trying to project what was happening in 1994 during the genocide in order for genocide deniers not to be able to refute the existence of the genocide, these messages ended up being a psychological burden to survivors. In order to support faculty and students at USF to understand how Rwandan genocide survivors have tried to cope with mental health and trauma, University of South Florida Holocaust and Genocide Studies Center is in the process of creating partnership with Kigali Health Institute (KHI) so that we can acquire more than 50 theses and other rarely accessible researches that have been conducted by at KHI as it relates to Mental health and trauma of survivors of the Rwandan genocide. Some of these theses include those on women who were raped during the genocide, growth of incidence of epilepsy, and soldiers who were demobilized after fighting to liberate the country.