In 2013, the Visual History Archive expanded beyond the Holocaust for the first time, taking in 64 audiovisual testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. 

That set of atrocities claimed as many as one million lives over the course of about 100 days in 1994 when government-backed militias of ethnic Hutus went on a mass killing spree targeting the country’s next largest ethnic group, the Tutsis.

The Rwandan government has since eliminated the official use of those ethnic terms in its census and on identity cards in hopes of fostering reconciliation.

Compiling the Rwandan testimonies for the Visual History Archive has been a group effort.

Conducted in the United States and Rwanda in two languages – some in English, others in Kinyarwanda – the Rwandan collection was assembled in collaboration with Aegis Trust and the Kigali Genocide Memorial, with additional support provided by IBUKA. While USC Shoah Foundation recorded 15 of these testimonies, Kigali Genocide Memorial staff in Rwanda recorded the remaining 49.

Although the collection was integrated into the Archive recently, the Institute has been working with Rwandan organizations on genocide-related projects since 2007. Partners on the initiative to gather testimonies as part of the Rwanda Archive and Education Program include Aegis Trust, the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre and others.

Through the years, Rwandan organizations have sent delegations to USC Shoah Foundation and vice versa.

In fall 2011, staff members from the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center spent two months at the Institute studying the Institute's indexing methodology and lending their expertise to the development of indexing terminology appropriate for the Rwandan Tutsi genocide experience.

In February of 2014, Rwandan President Paul Kagame visited USC Shoah Foundation to learn more about the Institute’s work linking testimony, technology and education.

In April of 2014, a delegation of staff and supporters of USC Shoah Foundation went to Rwanda for a weeklong mission to learn about the Institute’s work in Rwanda, reinforce the Institute’s commitment, and share the experience with others. 

In April of 2015, a group of staff from Aegis Trust in Kigali – which maintains its own archive of Rwandan testimonies – came to USC Shoah Foundation to receive onsite training on indexing techniques and other aspects of video archiving.

USC Shoah Foundation is also working with Aegis Trust Rwanda and the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies on the Gacaca Project to digitize and preserve 12,000 Gacaca Court case files – 60 million documents that were created after the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide.

In addition, the Institute is a key player in the Rwanda Peace Education Program (RPEP), which is led by multiple international partners to develop peace education in Rwanda. USC Shoah Foundation’s role in RPEP is to help the Kigali Genocide Memorial in strengthening the capacities of its own growing genocide archive and engage in collaborative educational programs that include teaching with testimony and the use of the Institute’s educational platform IWitness in Rwandan schools.

More about our work in Rwanda

To support any of these ongoing projects, please contact Dornsife Advancement at (213) 740-4990 or advancement@dornsife.usc.edu.

Rwandan Clips Yes