Ambassador Helena Rietz, now Head of the Africa Department at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign affairs, today expressed Stockholm’s pride in the Aegis Trust’s peacebuilding education work in Rwanda – for which the Swedish Government has provided significant support.
Ambassador Rietz was visiting the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda for the second time. Having previously visited in 2004, Rietz was also in Rwanda in 1997 – just three years after the Genocide against the Tutsi.
“Thank you for honouring the victims of the genocide in Rwanda in a beautiful and dignified way and at the same time learning from history to prevent genocide in the future,” she wrote in the Kigali Genocide Memorial visitor’s book. “Also, a warm thanks for the briefing by Aegis Trust on your work on peacebuilding and reconciliation that the Government of Sweden is proud to support.”
The Ambassador is pictured above receiving an Ubumuntu pin badge from Aegis Africa Representative Freddy Mutanguha. Celebrating ‘Ubumuntu’ – our shared humanity, actively expressed through empathy and care for other people – sales of the pin support the Memorial and the Aegis Trust’s continued work in peace education (find them online at championhumanity.com).
Established by the Aegis Trust in 2004 at the request of the Rwandan Government and Kigali City Council, the Kigali Genocide Memorial continues to be run by Aegis today on behalf of CNLG (Rwanda’s National Commission for the Fight against Genocide) as a place both of remembrance and learning for a new generation.
