RwandaKnown as "The Land of a Thousand Hills", Rwanda is Africa’s most densely populated country. Nearly everyone lives off the land, using terraced hillsides to grow crops or graze animals.
Rwanda’s population is made up of three ethnic groups, the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. Particularly, Hutus and Tutsis have a long history of bitter conflict despite many similarities. In 1994 up to one million people, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were massacred within the space of 100 days, in an orchestrated campaign of genocide.
Neighbour killed neighbour, leaving children orphaned and families separated. Despite efforts to promote reconciliation and peacebuilding, mistrust among the ethnic groups continues.
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| Left Behind: Orphans and Vulnerable Children The combined effects of the genocide and the HIV/AIDS pandemic have left children in Rwanda traumatized and alone.
More than 65,000 households are headed by children, most often where the eldest sibling has become the breadwinner and caregiver for younger children.
They have been left behind by parents who died in the genocide or since then to HIV/AIDS, and by extended family and communities who offer no support.
With nearly half of Rwanda’s population under 18, meeting the needs of the generation left behind is critical to the nation’s future.
Children living in child or youth-headed households are: • less likely to attend school.
• more vulnerable to physical and mental health problems.
• more likely to demonstrate behavioural problems due to lack of appropriate adult guidance.
• are more vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse, property and land grabbing and labour exploitation.
Source: Human Rights Watch 2003
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Threats to children’s development One in two Rwandan households is vulnerable to food shortages. Nearly half of all children under five are short for their age due to chronic malnutrition. Irreversible after the age of two, stunting affects children’s mental and physical development, now and into adulthood.
Over 70% of diseases that affect Rwandans are waterborne; one third of the population does not have access to safe water.
Heavy rains also lead to flooding and landslides, risking lives, damaging homes and farmland, and interrupting the water supply system.
World Vision in Rwanda World Vision began working in Rwanda in 1994, as millions fled after the genocide started.
World Vision initially provided emergency help to those displaced, and care for unaccompanied children, and then helped people resettle as they returned home. Since 2000, World Vision has been working with communities in Rwanda to find long-term solutions to poverty and injustice.
As Rwandans are still recovering from Africa’s worst genocide of modern times, World Vision is working with some 1.3 million people, through 22 long-term, child-focused development programmes.
Key activities include:
• helping orphans, vulnerable children and widows to start income-generation activities.
• training farmers on modern agricultural methods and providing loans to farmers’ co-operatives.
• training teachers and assisting 20,000 orphans and vulnerable children, and 50,000 sponsored children, with school fees and materials.
• encouraging community-based healing, peace-building, forgiveness and reconciliation activities.
• integrating HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention activities in all community programmes.
• increasing access to health care for 60,000 children through a community medical insurance scheme.
• helping communities reduce vulnerabilities and build resilience to natural disasters.
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