Agathe Uwilingiyimana (23 May 1953 – 7 April 1994) was a
RwandaThe Republic of Rwanda is a small landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of east-central Africa, bordered by Uganda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania. Home to approaching 10 million people, Rwanda supports the densest population in continental Africa, most of whom...
n political figure. She served as
Prime Minister of RwandaThis page contains a list of the Prime Ministers of Rwanda....
from 18 July 1993 until her death on 7 April 1994. Her term was ended when she was assassinated during the opening stages of the
Rwandan GenocideThe Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda's Tutsis and Hutu political moderates by Hutus under the Hutu Power ideology. Over the course of approximately 100 days, from the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana on 6 April through mid-July, at least 500,000...
. She was Rwanda's first and so far only female prime minister.
Agathe Uwilingiyimana, one of the most influential women in Rwandan history, a
HutuThe Hutu are a Central African ethnic group, living mainly in Rwanda and Burundi.-Population statistics:Despite the 1972 Burundi Genocide where an estimated 100,000...
, was born in 1953 in the village of Nyaruhengeri, some 140 km southeast of
KigaliKigali, population 851,024 , is the capital and largest city of Rwanda. It is situated in the centre of the nation, and has been the economic, cultural, and transport hub of Rwanda since it became capital at independence in 1962. The main residence and offices of the President of Rwanda are located...
, Rwanda's capital city, to farming parents.
Agathe Uwilingiyimana (23 May 1953 – 7 April 1994) was a
RwandaThe Republic of Rwanda is a small landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of east-central Africa, bordered by Uganda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania. Home to approaching 10 million people, Rwanda supports the densest population in continental Africa, most of whom...
n political figure. She served as
Prime Minister of RwandaThis page contains a list of the Prime Ministers of Rwanda....
from 18 July 1993 until her death on 7 April 1994. Her term was ended when she was assassinated during the opening stages of the
Rwandan GenocideThe Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda's Tutsis and Hutu political moderates by Hutus under the Hutu Power ideology. Over the course of approximately 100 days, from the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana on 6 April through mid-July, at least 500,000...
. She was Rwanda's first and so far only female prime minister.
Early life
Agathe Uwilingiyimana, one of the most influential women in Rwandan history, a
HutuThe Hutu are a Central African ethnic group, living mainly in Rwanda and Burundi.-Population statistics:Despite the 1972 Burundi Genocide where an estimated 100,000...
, was born in 1953 in the village of Nyaruhengeri, some 140 km southeast of
KigaliKigali, population 851,024 , is the capital and largest city of Rwanda. It is situated in the centre of the nation, and has been the economic, cultural, and transport hub of Rwanda since it became capital at independence in 1962. The main residence and offices of the President of Rwanda are located...
, Rwanda's capital city, to farming parents. Shortly after she was born the family emigrated from the border region of
ButareButare is a city in the South Province of Rwanda and capital of Huye district. It was the capital of the former Butare Province, Rwanda, that was dissolved on January 1, 2006....
to work in the
Belgian CongoThe Belgian Congo was the formal title of present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo between King Leopold II's formal relinquishment of personal control over the state to Belgium on 15 November 1908, and the dawn of Congolese independence on 30 June 1960.-Background: 1884-1908:Until the later...
. Her father moved the family back to Butare when Uwilingiyimana was four. After success in public examinations she was educated at Notre Dame des Citeaux High School, and obtained the certificate to teach
humanitiesThe humanities are academic disciplines which study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytic, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural and social sciences....
at twenty.
In 1976 she received an A-level certificate in mathematics and chemistry; she became a mathematics teacher in a
ButareButare is a city in the South Province of Rwanda and capital of Huye district. It was the capital of the former Butare Province, Rwanda, that was dissolved on January 1, 2006....
social school. In the same year she married Ignace Barahira, a fellow student from her village. Their first child was born later in the year; they would go on to have five children.
When she was thirty (in 1983) she taught
chemistryChemistry is the science concerned with the composition, behavior, structure, and properties of matter, as well as the changes it undergoes during chemical reactions...
at the
National University of RwandaThe National University of Rwanda is the largest university in Rwanda. It is located at in the city of Butare and was established in 1963 by the government in cooperation with the Congregation of the Dominicans from the Province of Quebec.When it was established, the NUR had three divisions The...
. This was financially possible because her husband obtained a University Laboratory post at twice the salary of a math teacher. She received a B.Sc. in 1985, teaching chemistry for four years in the Butare academic schools. Rwandan media was later critical of her scientific education, as it was thought that girls should not study science.
Rise to prime minister
In 1986 she created a Savings and Credit Cooperative Society among the staff of the Butare academic school, and her high-profile role in the self-help organization brought her to the attention of the Kigali authorities, who wanted to appoint decision makers from the discontented south of the country. In 1989 she became a director in the Ministry of Commerce.
She joined the Republican and Democratic Movement (MDR), an opposition party, in 1992, and four months later was appointed Minister of Education by Dismas Nsensiyaremye, the first opposition prime minister under a power-sharing scheme negotiated between President
Juvenal HabyarimanaJuvénal Habyarimana was President of the Republic of Rwanda from 1973 until 1994. During his 20-year dictatorship he favored his own ethnic group, the Hutus, and supported the Hutu majority in neighboring Burundi against the Tutsi government...
and five major opposition parties. As education minister she abolished the academic ethnic quota system, awarding public school places and scholarships by open merit ranking. This decision earned her the enmity of the Hutu-extremist parties.
On 17 July 1993, after a meeting between President Habyarimana and all five parties, Agathe Uwilingiyimana became the first woman prime minister of Rwanda, replacing Dr Nsensiyaremye, the man who had appointed her Minister of Education, and whose exoneration of the president was unpopular with the other parties. Since Uwilingiyimana didn't have the power base of the other candidates, and was not wanted by Habyarimana most observers believe that her appointment as prime minister was based on the political calculation by the President that she would divide the opposition, and by the opposition that she would be controllable. On the day of her appointment, Nsensiyareme suspended Uwilingiyimana's MDR membership. (The MDR had opposed the formation of any interim government excluding the rebel RPF.)
Arusha Accords
The Habyarimana–Uwilingiyimana government was still
HutuThe Hutu are a Central African ethnic group, living mainly in Rwanda and Burundi.-Population statistics:Despite the 1972 Burundi Genocide where an estimated 100,000...
dominated, and had the daunting task of successfully negotiating a peace accord with the rebel Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), the
TutsiTutsi are one of three native peoples of the nations of Rwanda and Burundi in central Africa, the other two being the Twa and the Hutu.-Origins:...
-dominated guerilla movement. An agreement between Habyarimana, the five opposition parties (led ostensibly by Uwilingiyimana), and the RPF, was finally reached on 4 August1993. Under the "
Arusha AccordsThe Arusha Accords were a set of five accords signed in Arusha, Tanzania on August 4, 1993, by the government of Rwanda and the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front , under mediation, to end a three-year long Rwandan Civil War...
", Habyarimana's ruling MRND would take the transitional presidency, and the Prime Minister would come from the MDR. Since the MDR had suspended Uwilingiyimana they chose
Faustin TwagiramunguFaustin Twagiramungu is an ethnic Hutu politician in Rwanda. He was prime minister from 1994 until his resignation in 1995, the first head of government appointed after the Rwandese Patriotic Front captured Kigali...
(who had been instrumental in suspending her) to replace her.
Caretaker prime minister
President Habyarimana officially dismissed her as Prime Minister eighteen days after her appointment to the office, but she stayed on in a caretaker capacity for eight months, until her death in April 1994. This was despite being excoriated by all the Hutu-dominated parties, including her own MDR, and President Habyrimana's ruling party, which held a press conference in January 1994 attacking Uwilingiyimana for being a "political trickster".
The swearing in of the "Broad Based Transitional Government", or BBTG, was to have taken place on 25 March 1994. At that point, Uwilingiyimana was to have stepped down in favor of Faustin Twagiramungu, having been guaranteed a lower level ministerial post in the new government. However, the RPF did not appear at the ceremony, postponing the establishment of the new regime. She reached agreement with them that the new government would be sworn in on the following day.
Assassination
The talks between President Habyarimana, Uwilingiyimana, and the Rwandan Patriotic Front were never concluded, because the president's plane was shot down by rockets at around 8:30 pm on 6 April 1994. From Habyarimana's death until her assassination the following morning (approximately 14 hours), Prime Minister Uwilingiyimana was Rwanda's constitutional head of government.
In an interview with
Radio FranceRadio France is a French public service radio broadcaster.-Mission:Radio France's two principal missions are:* To create and expand the programming on all of their stations; and...
on the night of President Habyarimana's assassination, Uwilingiyimana said that there would be an immediate investigation. She also said, in her last recorded words:
there is shooting, people are being terrorized, people are inside their homes lying on the floor. We are suffering the consequences of the death of the head of state, I believe. We, the civilians, are in no way responsible for the death of our head of state.
The
U.N. peacekeeping forceThe United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda was a mission instituted by the United Nations to aid the implementation of the Arusha Accords, signed August 4, 1993, which were meant to end the Rwandan Civil War. The mission lasted from October 1993 to March 1996...
sent a
BelgianThe Kingdom of Belgium is a country in northwest Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts its headquarters, as well as those of other major international organizations, including NATO...
escort to her home before 3 am the following morning; they intended to take her to
Radio RwandaRadio Rwanda is a radio station of the Rwandan Office of Information , a government information agency that also owns Rwandan Television ....
, from where she planned a dawn broadcast appealing for national calm. Uwilingiyimana's house was further guarded by five Ghanaian U.N. troops on the outside in addition to the ten Belgian troops. Inside the house, the family was protected by the Rwandan presidential guard, but between 6:55 and 7:15 am the presidential guard surrounded the U.N. troops and told them to lay down their arms. Fatally, the blue berets ultimately complied, handing over their weapons just before 9 am.
Seeing the stand-off outside her home, Agathe Uwilingiyimana and her family took refuge in the Kigali U.N. volunteer compound around 8 am. Eye-witnesses to the inquiry on U.N. actions say that Rwandan soldiers entered the compound at 10 am, and searched it for Agathe Uwilingiyimana. Fearing for the lives of her children, Agathe and her husband emerged, and they were shot and killed by the presidential guard on the morning of 7 April 1994. Her children escaped and eventually took refuge in
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
. In his book,
Me Against My Brother,
Scott PetersonScott Peterson is a writer. He was a Middle East correspondent for the Daily Telegraph but as of 2000 was a staff writer and Moscow bureau chief for the Christian Science Monitor. His book, Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda is an account of his experiences and...
writes that the U.N. troops sent to protect Uwilingiyimana were castrated, gagged with their own genitalia, and then murdered.
In his book
Shake Hands with the Devil, U.N. commander
Roméo DallaireLieutenant-General Roméo Antonius Dallaire, OC, CMM, GOQ, MSC, CD is a Canadian senator, humanitarian, author and retired general...
writes that Uwilingiyimana and her husband surrendered themselves to the genocidaires to save their children, who stayed successfully hidden in the adjoining housing compound for employees of the
United Nations Development ProgrammeThe United Nations Development Programme is the United Nations' global development network. The UNDP is an executive board within the United Nations General Assembly...
. The children survived and were picked by Captain
Mbaye DiagneCaptain Mbaye Diagne was a Senegalese Army officer and a United Nations military observer during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. He is credited with saving many lives during his time in Rwanda through nearly continuous rescue missions at great peril to himself.A devout Muslim, Mbaye was one of nine...
, a
UNAMIRThe United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda was a mission instituted by the United Nations to aid the implementation of the Arusha Accords, signed August 4, 1993, which were meant to end the Rwandan Civil War. The mission lasted from October 1993 to March 1996...
military observer, who smuggled them into the
Hôtel des Mille CollinesThe Hôtel des Mille Collines is a large hotel in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda. It became famous as the building in which more than a thousand people took refuge during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994...
. They were eventually resettled in Switzerland.
Major
Bernard NtuyahagaMajor Bernard Ntuyahaga, Rwandan Armed Forces, was convicted by a Belgian court in the murders of ten United Nations peacekeepers at the start of the Rwandan Genocide.- Biography :...
was indicted by the
International Criminal Tribunal for RwandaThe International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda , or the Tribunal pénal international pour le Rwanda , is an international court established in November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in order to judge people responsible for the Rwandan genocide and other serious violations of the...
(ICTR) for the murder of Uwilingiyimana and the U.N. peacekeepers, but the charges were dropped.
He was eventually convicted of murder of the peacekeepers. On December 18, 2008, the ICTR found Colonel
Théoneste BagosoraColonel Théoneste Bagosora is a former Rwandan military officer. He is chiefly known for his role in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.-History and career:Bagosora was born in Giciye commune, Gisenyi préfecture, in Rwanda, of Hutu ethnicity...
guilty of
genocideGenocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.While precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of...
, crimes against humanity and war crimes and sentenced him to
life imprisonmentLife imprisonment is a sentence of imprisonment for a serious felony crime where the convicted person is to remain in prison for the rest of his or her life...
, in part due to his involvement in the murders of Uwilingiyimana and the Belgian peacekeepers.
Legacy
Though short, her political career was precedent-setting as one of the few female political figures in Africa. She was contemporaneous with
Sylvie KinigiSylvie Kinigi was Prime Minister of Burundi from 10 July 1993 to 7 February 1994, the first and to date only woman to hold the position....
, Prime Minister of
BurundiBurundi , officially the Republic of Burundi, is a country in the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and south, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Its size is just under 28,000 km² with an estimated population of...
. As a memorial to the late Rwandan Prime Minister, the
Forum for African Women EducationalistsThe Forum for African Women Educationalists is an organization which seeks to promote girls' education in Africa, by making sure they have access to schools and are able to complete their studies and fulfill their potential....
(FAWE) established
The Agathe Innovative Award Competition. The award funds educational and income generating projects aimed at improving the prospects of African girls. One of FAWE's founding members was Agathe Uwilingiyimana.
External links
- A complete biography from FAWE (Since the Forum for African Women Educationalists has created an award in her honour it is to be expected that this contains no criticism of Agathe Uwilingiyimana.)
- Report of the independent inquiry into the actions of the United Nations during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda - containing the complete findings of the inquiry about the morning of the assassination in the section "The crash of the Presidential plane; genocide begins". Although Lt Lotin, the blue beret commander, had been ordered not to surrender his weapons, his orders also included the U.N. directive not to fire unless fired upon, and by the time his commander told him to negotiate (rather than surrender) four of his men were already disarmed.