On November 4, 2016 in the Robert A. Scott Student Center, Alumni Lounges ( SC156-157), Eugenie Mukeshimana, Rwandan genocide survivor and founder of the Genocide Survivors Support Network, will provide an update on developments in her native country and neighboring Burundi.

More than a quarter of a million people in Burundi have fled in terror as opposition militias plot their return. Without international assistance, a humanitarian disaster looms. Like neighboring Rwanda, Burundi is made up mainly of the Hutu and Tutsi groups among whom an atmosphere of insipient violence and fear fueled by the legacy of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda looms large.

Eugenie Mukeshimana was a bride who had studied accounting in high school and lived in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city. In 1994, when she was pregnant with her daughter, Mukeshimana’s life turned upside down. An ethnic Tutsi, she and her husband went into hiding to stay alive as Hutu extremists began a campaign of genocide that would eventually claim a million lives.

When it was over, Mukeshimana and her daughter survived, but she lost her husband, father, sister and many other family members. Over the years, Mukeshimana worked to rebuild her life and came to the United States in 2001 where she attended college and founded the Genocide Survivors Support Network. A resident of Baltimore, Maryland, she travels around the United States to educate people about the genocide in Rwanda and serves as executive director of the network.