Genocide’s Children

This is almost too much to bear. Alas, there’s not a podcast available of this story I heard earlier this evening on PRI’s The World radio program on children born of rape during the Rwandan genocide. But here’s the teaser and a link to the transcript.

February 19, 2008  When we talk about genocide in Rwanda we tend to focus on the slaughter—close to a million people killed in a mere three months. But the genocide was also about rape–brutal, widespread rape– mostly of Tutsi women by Hutu men. It’s thought that the majority of the women who are genocide survivors are also rape survivors. Thousands of them bore children as a result.

BBC Newsphoto: BBC News

Those children and their mothers now live at the margins of Rwandan society in shame, poverty and neglect. The World’s Jeb Sharp reports. Read story.

By Noelle McAfee

I am professor of philosophy at Emory University and editor of the Kettering Review. My latest book, Fear of Breakdown: Politics and Psychoanalysis, explores what is behind the upsurge of virulent nationalism and intransigent politics across the world today. My other writings include Democracy and the Political Unconscious; Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship; Julia Kristeva; and numerous articles and book chapters. Edited volumes include Standing with the Public: the Humanities and Democratic Practice and a special issue of the philosophy journal Hypatia on feminist engagements in democratic theory. I am also the author of the entry on feminist political philosophy in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and well into my next book project on democratic public life.

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