Beginning of the Rwandan Genocide

Date: April 7, 1994 • Location: Kigali, Rwanda

This milestone marked the outbreak and beginning of this historic period, which spanned 1994.

Rwandan Civil War: The Rwandan genocide began a few hours after the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana, with hundreds of thousands killed in the following 100 days.

The Rwandan Civil War was a large-scale civil war in Rwanda which was fought between the Rwandan Armed Forces, representing the incumbent Third Rwandese Republic, and the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) from 1 October 1990 to 18 July 1994. The war arose from the long-running dispute between the Hutu and Tutsi groups within the Rwandan population. The Rwandan Revolution, which broke out in 1959, had replaced the Tutsi monarchy with a Hutu-led republic, forcing more than 336,000 Tutsis to seek refuge in neighbouring countries. A group of these refugees in Uganda founded the RPF which, under the leadership of Fred Rwigyema and Paul Kagame, became a battle-ready army by the late 1980s.