Yolande Mukagasana

"I accept my legacy of genocide (Rwandan) because if I am alive, it is to accomplish a mission".


Yolande Mukagasana was born in Rwanda in 1954. She was an anaesthetic nurse until the Rwandan genocide in 1994. She is the author of several books on genocide and the testimonies of survivors. She is co-author of the play Rwanda 94, written in 2002.

Her work has been recognised with several awards including: The Award for Testimony and Solidarity by the Alexandre Langer Foundation, Italy in July 1998. The Award for International Understanding between Nations and for Human Rights in November 1999. The Golden Dove for Peace Award for her journalistic work by the Disarm Archive Foundation, Rome in July 2002. Winner of the Woman of the XXI Century for Resistance by the Association of Women in the Cultural Centre of Schaerbeek, Belgium in March 2003.  Honourable Mention in the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education in September 2003.  Moral Courage Award by the American Jewish Committee, Washington DC in May 2008.

After setting an appointment by phone I have to tell her that my son will be with me because I cannot leave him with anyone. She responds laughing, "Thank goodness because if you do not bring your son, I don´t want to see you here." As I cross the threshold of her home, she introduces me to one of her adopted daughters, Jeanne, and her newborn grandson just five days old. Yolande is a grandmother, which is no small feat...

Yolande's life as a fighter for peace and for a just world began when the thing most important to her disappeared. We go back to April 1994 in Rwanda: her three children, her husband and siblings were killed by Hutu militia during the genocide that would bury a million Tutsis and “moderate” Hutus. Since then, Yolande has fought and relies on her immense pain to expose the truth about the genocide, to denounce those who have armed the militias and those who, by their silence are also guilty of genocide.

"I do not know if I chose life but I found myself living." So said Yolande after surviving the months of horror of the genocide. Following that Yolande took up her pen and desolated, began to tell everything she had seen, with the added insecurity of thinking that nobody would believe her. She did it to survive; to prevent her loved ones from having died for nothing. She feels she has a role to play because death did not choose her.

Some months later she went into exile in Belgium, where a feeling of abandonment to her children left her heartbroken and realizing that the source of her pending duties was in her homeland, Rwanda. Yolande returned to her roots to talk to the orphans and widows and to rebuild a dwelling in the same place where the militias had razed hers. She visited the common grave where her children lay and asked their permission to take care of orphans of the genocide. Three were welcomed into her family. Very soon her family would be twenty-one, including three nieces who would be adopted officially. "I cannot replace your mother but we are a re-composed family," she answers when they call Yolande “Mum”.

Today, Yolande resides in Belgium. The children are almost all adults, they have been schooled, have academic titles and university degrees and some are married with children. Yolande speaks of mutual love between her and the children as the fulcrum that allowed them to succeed, to not leave them to die.

In 1999 she founded the Nyamirambo Point d'Appui Association (Point of Support). Nyamirambo is the name of the neighbourhood where she lived in Kigali, Rwanda. Since then, the association has been responsible for several projects both in Rwanda, which supports various local associations, as well as in Belgium.

In Rwanda, Nyamirambo Point d'Appui supports the creation of the Students Association of Genocide Survivors (Association des Étudiants et Élèves Rescapés du Génocide, AERG), which has a presence in every university and in various secondary schools in the country. Yolande expresses great emotion about a particular project undertaken in high schools, where boarding is widely practiced. She emphasizes that the children and orphans in these schools miss family visits on weekends. They have therefore organized a system of guardianship where a college student visits them once a month and also meets with faculty. They are like brothers and sisters for these orphans.

The action of Nyamirambo Point d'Appui leads her to work with Associations of raped women and widows of the genocide. For those living in isolated areas of the city, they have created a society of bicycle taxis that provide transportation and mobility. With another women's association, she has purchased sewing machines and provided training and now these women are professional seamstresses.  They now sell the clothing that they have made in the local market. Elsewhere in the country, a group of widows has been helped to buy eighteen cows in order to facilitate the cultivation of their land with corn and potatoes: the surpluses are sold in the local market. These initiatives enable these women to survive from not just the psychological point of view but also economically and socially, providing substance to their lives.

She seems both very fragile and very strong when she tells me her story and her struggle. Yolande expresses herself in a very calm manner; she emanates peace. Her wise words are round truths. One does not sense any hatred or revenge in her message. In fact she has been able to talk with those who killed face to face. They were her neighbours and friends; she cared for some of them when she was a local nurse. She has heard them regret what they did and she is convinced that reconciliation is possible.

Over the years, her struggle has spread to the struggle for tolerance and the pursuit of justice. However, she is fearful that the Rwandan genocide was not the final one, since then others have occurred and others will do so. This has not eroded her struggle and she has made it her reason for living. She says that the only weapon she has is the word, writing and the desire to share her experience with all those who want to hear it. It continues for Yolande. She travels the world spreading her story, shouting her suffering, naming it as "unspeakable" to students, associations for historical memory, in universities, etc. When she talks about her life, her mission as a genocide survivor, she says: "My life is a tool that the world can use to be better."

Yolande's greatest dream is to mobilize all the women on the planet to stand up against war because they are the first victims. "No peace will ever be achieved by killing, that does not exist." But with her feet on the ground, what she desires most for her country is to launch a process of reparation to the victims of genocide. "They can not restore our lives but they can give us a dignified life."

Yolande puts an end to our encounter with these final words, "My spirit is invincible, it is lucid. Perhaps my body cannot continue because it is weaker, older, but my spirit is still here..."

Charlotte Van Den Abeele

Elise Boulding

(July 6, 1920 – June 24, 2010)

"To share in the best way the worlds of experience of men and women will be an important step in human development" (Irene Comins Mingol, author of the text).

Elise Boulding was born in Oslo, but her family soon emigrated to the United States, where she developed her own life in the two dimensions that characterise it, as activist and researcher for peace. Of particular note is her work in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, which she chaired for several years. In 1969 she completed a Ph.D. in Sociology with a thesis on the effects of modernisation on women's roles. Thus she began career as a researcher but always with activism as a reference. From 1985 until her death she was Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado and at the end of her life she lived in North Hill, Massachusetts. She has received numerous awards for her work for peace and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.
Elise Boulding is noted for her contributions in pioneering work in three areas: Research for Peace, Women's Studies and Future Studies.

Considered the matriarch of Peace Research, Elise Boulding played a key role in the consolidation of the discipline from 1950. In some studies initially dominated by men and focused on the analysis of the war, she made fundamental contributions that opened new research agendas. First she incorporated the approach of peace in a context in which the study of war was dominant. Elise prioritised the study of peace activism and the role of NGOs in building a culture of peace. Secondly, she put great emphasis on the role of peace education as a means for social change. And finally she incorporated the gender perspective, noting for the first time the potential contributions of women for peace. It must be said that activism and social change are to Elise Boulding both the motor and the means of research for peace. In this sense, she explicitly advocated the integration of peace research, peace education and peace activism. In fact, her life was a constant attempt to integrate the private and public, education, research and activism for peace.

Elise Boulding's research on the role of women in peace building precedes a large part of the work on the ability of women to care for people and peace, later developed by writers such as Birgit Brock-Utne, Carol Gilligan, Betty Reardon and Sara Ruddick. Her rigorous and detailed research on women's movements for peace throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is remarkable, especially her study of national and international networks of women for peace. The social feminism of the nineteenth century with a comprehensive view of social problems originated a series of transnational women's groups concerned with both poor working conditions and health as poverty, exclusion and wars. In this sense, Elise Boulding liked to point out that social or humanist feminism preceded the development of more specialised equality.

According to Elise Boulding, there are three traditional areas of women’s work that bind them to building a culture of peace: the education of children - if one accepts that at the age of seven children have created a world view then women have a great responsibility for this, "domestic work" not sufficiently recognized by economists and identified by Boulding as the fifth world and work for peace, although it has never been formally labelled as such. This vision of women as caregivers and carriers of the values of a culture of peace is not, according to Boulding, essentialist. Boulding believes that men have much to learn from women about empathy and care. However, the work of women has traditionally been invisible or analyzed as a secondary activity. Elise denounces this phenomenon and claims the recognition of the contributions and legacy of women as well as the ability to share these tasks, and public space and private equity with men. "My argument is not essentialist in the sense that women are biologically predisposed to care for and work for peace. It is rather that the knowledge of women and their worlds of experience have equipped them to work creatively as workers for peace in ways that men have not been trained by their knowledge and experiences. Obviously this could change. Greater sharing of experience between the worlds of men and women will be an important step in human development."

Elise worked hard as many other feminists do, to not exclude men in their thinking. She specifically denounced the suffering of many men who do not enjoy or want the role assigned by the same patriarchy: the feeling of humiliation and failure, loneliness, the terror of being weak and the pressure to be real men. During childhood and youth, kids experience a forced socialisation in an aggressive style of male domination. There are men who try to overcome these crises challenging the male identity assigned by patriarchy but others find an easy way out by domestic violence, work in the military or some other type of aggressive identity that becomes a way according to Elise Boulding, to address male insecurity. Boulding, in this area, makes a visible effort to study and also the movements of men for equality and peace.

Another of the areas of research for Elise Boulding was Future Studies.  Our picture of the future determines how we behave and what we do in the present. Elise conducted workshops in the eighties, using the imagination to think about the world we want for the future in two areas: "Imagine a world without weapons" and "Imagine a post-patriarchy". If women are not able to visualise how they would like the world in the future they will not be able to take appropriate steps towards it. "How would it be, how would a post-patriarchy work?", "Imagine a future without weapons, what would this world be like?". After the first step of fantasy and imagination, the participants then have to analyse the types of institutions that would support or would make the future possible.

Elise Boulding was able to combine research, activism and peace education. She is considered the matriarch of Peace Studies, was Secretary General of IPRA (International Peace Research Association) from 1988 to 1991, a pioneer in recognising the role of women in building peace. She was a complete and unique person, capable, as Mary Lee Morrison says in her biographical work, of addressing the United Nations without any problem and in the next second stopping to tie the shoe of a child and be attentive to the needs of both at the same time.