I was looking through the papers online the other day and came across the most profoundly moving photo of a tiny little emaciated little boy being fed water by a remarkable lady called Anja Ringgren Lovén. The little boy, named Hope, had been living on the streets and surviving on scraps for eight months after his family abandoned him, believing him to be a witch.
Anja feeding Hope
Anja took him to the nearest hospital where made a full recovery. “He’s taking food for himself, and he responds to the medicine he gets,” she wrote in a blog post. “Today he has had powers to sit up and smiling at us. He’s a strong little boy. To see him sit and play with my own son is without doubt the greatest experience of my life! I just don’t know how to describe it in words.”
Three years ago Anja Ringgren Lovén sold everything she owned back in Denmark to set up her charity African Children’s Aid Education and Development Foundation (ACAEDF) in Nigeria to support children who had been accused of being witches. She received a call about Hope and immediately went to his rescue.
Hope now
Anja and her partner David are now looking after Hope at a home they created for abandoned children accused of witchcraft and they currently have 34 in their care.
If you’d like to donate to their cause, please click here.
Depending on what publications you read you’re probably used to seeing certain ‘celebrities’ splashed across their pages, mainly because of the way they look and not usually based on merit.
If you look on Instagram you can see that Kim Kardashian has 57.5 million followers and that her sister Kylie has 48 million followers – but seriously, why? I don’t want to disrespect them, but I don’t know want they have done with their lives to gain so much fame. This isn’t really their fault though and the media have a lot to answer for. They have covered them so much in the press that girls of today feel they have to look a certain way to be considered beautiful and this is completely wrong.
A friend of mine, who is only 22 years old, said to me the other day that she’s thinking about getting her lips done i.e. plumped up. I was absolutely horrified. She’s a beautiful young woman yet has been led to believe that bigger lips equals more beauty. How is it possible that we’re being forced to believe that beauty is only skin deep? That how you look is one of the main things that matters in life?
For some reason the press seems to think it is more interesting to report on these celebrities, but is it just me or does this seem insane? There are so many amazing women out there who do extraordinary things for the betterment of society yet you rarely see these beautiful women in the news. I suppose it works two fold in that people who are actually doing something worthwhile don’t feel the need to court tabloid attention but nonetheless I know who I would prefer to read about.
Last year it was reported how Kylie Jenner was given a Ferrari and had a lip augmentation for her 18th birthday, yet at the same age Malala was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize (after surviving a gun shot to the head from the Taliban for being brave enough to report about them) and opened a school for Syrian refugee girls in Lebanon. Now, I know the Kardashians do give a fair bit of money to charity so it is almost mean of me to pick on them like this and I don’t want to pit these women against each other, I just want to make an important point that both are not given equal coverage and maybe if they were, the youth of today would aspire to be a Malala instead of a Kardashian.
It’s been 7 months since I last uploaded a post which is far too long. I’ve missed it dreadfully but a lot has happened this year – I got a puppy, have been planning my wedding, working at the day job and also my script.
Me and Mimi
That’s not to say I’ve forgotten about my blog, far from it. I still collect ideas, do research and have drafted several posts which I plan to complete and add to Every Little Action as soon as I can.
I am getting married in a few weeks and in the New Year I will be back on here regularly writing about the people and subjects I’m passionate about. Thank you to everyone who reads my blog, I hope it can make even the smallest difference.
Last Friday my colleagues and I donned our Christmas jumpers for charity. I wanted the money to go to a smaller charity which is close to my heart – the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The DRC has been devastated by war and an epidemic of sexual violence for the past 20 years. In 1999 Dr Denis Mukwege founded the Panzi Hospital and has since treated over 19,000 women (and often child) survivors of sexual violence. After the survivors have been treated they receive care and are provided shelter, counselling and training in maths, literacy and entrepreneurship. They also receive training in basket weaving, soap making and embroidery.
Dr Denis Mukwege
These services are crucial as up to 60% of the women treated are unable to return home after treatment – most are abandoned by their husbands and families due to the stigma attached to rape.
Ross Kemp meets Dr Mukwege at the Panzi Hospital
I got in contact with the hospital to get an overview of the percentage of a donation that actually goes to helping the survivors, and for every £1 given, 90 pence of it goes towards the hospital treatment and after care. Only 10p goes on admin fees, which is is fantastic compared to a lot of the big charities out there.
We made £50 for the hospital and I’d like to say a huge thank you to all of my colleagues who took part.
If you would like to make a donation to the Panzi Hospital, please click here.
I recently had the pleasure of doing some volunteering for a fantastic charity called Ethiopiaid. I was lucky enough to be contacted by them about some information on my blog and after researching their work I was really impressed at how much of a difference they’ve made in Ethiopia over the last 25 years in areas such as poverty alleviation, healthcare and education.
They are a small charity with a huge passion for making a difference to those in need.
The charity was founded in 1989 by Sir Alec Reed. He had recently been to Ethiopia and seen for himself the poverty suffered by many Ethiopians, so starting with an investment of £1m, hardworking staff and donated office space Ethiopiaid has grown into a charity that has raised over £28 million for trusted community partners in the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa. In 2011, Sir Alec received a knighthood for his services to charity.
Ethiopiaid raises funds for trusted community partners in the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, and only work with the best local charities, valued for their expertise, skill and ambition.
The charity has very low admin expenses as they only have three members of staff in the UK and their office space is donated. The % of the donors £ that goes to admin costs is between 5-6%. So for every £1 you donate, only 5-6 pence of it goes on admin costs – the rest goes to those who need it.
The amount they donate to projects depend on the partner’s needs so this varies from year to year. In 2013, they donated £1.1 million of public funding to partner projects in Ethiopia.
Ethiopiaid are very realistic, they will not promise to change the entire world or all of Ethiopia. What they can promise is that together they will make a significant difference in the local areas that they do support.
Here are just some of Ethiopiaid’s community partners:
Eneredada
Eneredada, which means ‘Let’s help each other’, is a day centre for elderly people. A lack of pensions in Ethiopia means that life can be especially difficult for the elderly and often they have no living family to care for them and many are left trying to scrape together enough to survive from one day to the next.
Eneredada addresses basic needs by providing food, clothing, medicine and house repairs to those who require them. The volunteers also work to inspire confidence and a sense of belonging and self-worth amongst the members, many of whom consider themselves a burden.
HOPE
In Addis Ababa, there are an estimated 60,000 children living rough on the streets desperately looking for food and shelter. Many are forced to beg, steal or prostitute themselves, simply to get money for their next meal. For these children, education is a luxury they simply cannot afford.
Since 2000, HOPE has been working with Ethiopiaid to feed and school hundreds of street children who are rounded up by the dedicated project staff from doorways, bus stations and derelict hovels. The breakfast (two pieces of bread, milk and a banana) provides an incentive for attending informal classes in basic literacy and numeracy which are held afterwards. A social worker and project officer are actively working to re-unite targeted children with their families.
Just £100 will provide a street child with breakfast AND schooling for an entire year. In 2008, the results recorded by the school for its national examination takers was one of the best in the country.
Addids Ababa Fistula Hospital
Fistulas occur in Ethiopia for two main reasons. Pre-natal and maternal healthcare is often unavailable and in Ethiopia girls as young as 4 or 5 are betrothed and intercourse often takes place before their teens. Many of these girls are simply not ready to carry children and so complications arise when labour starts.
A fistula is a hole in the tissue between the vaginal wall and bladder which causes women to leak urine and faeces. This can be repaired with a simple operation, which lasts less than an hour, the cost of which is £400.
The nurse aides at the hospital are all ex-patients and the hospital trains women who are recovering from their operations in tailoring skills to help them to find work making dresses and uniforms after returning home. When a woman has fully recovered she is given a new dress and the means to get home. She is also instructed in how important it is to get to hospital for any future births. Each patient is provided with a card they can present to doctors on their arrival, explaining that they may be in need of a caesarean section.
The Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital has also opened four outreach centres across Ethiopia and the new midwifery college trains midwives to work in rural areas where antenatal care is desperately needed. After training, the midwives work in clinics in remote areas providing ante-natal care and attending child-births. In the case of obstructed labour the midwives will refer the women to the nearest hospital, improving the chances of a healthy childbirth and decrease the number of women falling victim to injuries such as fistula and worse.
Last year the doctors treated over 2,500 women.
Cheshire Services
For a disabled child in Ethiopia, access to education is almost impossible. Physical disability is often considered a curse from God and many disabled children and adults spend their whole lives hidden out of sight by their ashamed families. In addition, the lack of adequate healthcare in Ethiopia means mobility aids are not widely available. Those who are unable to walk unassisted are left to crawl or drag themselves around on the floor.
Ethiopiaid has been working with Cheshire Services since 1998 to provide thousands of disabled children and adults with walking appliances, corrective surgery and physiotherapy. The causes of their disabilities vary; many have suffered from polio, others have lost one or more limbs in land mine explosions and some have been involved in work place or traffic accidents. But there is hope of a brighter future for all of them.
AWSAD
AWSAD’s objective is to educate all Ethiopians – men, women and children – about the issues and injustice surrounding gender-based violence. They run two safe houses in Ethiopia, where victims of rape, violence and abuse can find shelter, food, medical care and counselling. The safe houses are supported by professional lawyers who provide legal aid to the women that have suffered gender based violence, in order to fight for justice.
At the safe house, the women have access to life skills training consisting of one to one sessions, group therapy and self defense training, in order to enhance the women’s confidence and psychological wellbeing. The women and girls also get training in food preparation, hair dressing and embroidery which will enable them to generate their own income and work towards an independent future once they have left the safe house.
Meron’s story…
This story starts back in 2001, when Meron, a five-year-old girl from Addis Ababa lost her mother. She was raised by her father but was brought up in isolation and never given the love and support she needed to flourish. Much worse was to come, and when Meron turned sixteen last year, her father – the one person who was meant to protect her – violently raped her.
So scared was Meron of her father that she believed he would kill her if she told anyone about this disgusting abuse. And so the rape continued for months and months. Before long, Meron’s belly began to grow. She was terrified and in denial. It was only when a neighbour encouraged her to have a check up that she fully realised the truth: Meron was pregnant.
The news broke her and Meron attempted suicide by drinking poison in her school playground. This was to be the turning point in her story. She was rushed to hospital by her teachers and it was there that she was referred to AWSAD, who took her to a safe house. She was given counselling to help her come to terms with her abuse, as well as medical attention to help her look after her unborn child. But the support did not end there.
AWSAD have helped to turn Meron’s life around. While under their care, she has safely given birth to her child and been given shelter, food, training in business and self-defence – even legal assistance. As a result, Meron’s father has been sentenced to over 21 years in prison.
Your gift could help pay for training for a victim – just as other supporters’ generosity did for Meron, who learned embroidery and business skills. She is now looking forward to starting her own company.
Ethiopiaid
By targeting the areas of poverty alleviation, healthcare and education Ethiopiaid are helping the poorest to find their way out of unnecessary suffering.
The charity visits Ethiopia at least once each year to conduct project field visits and as you can see from some of the examples above, their partners operate effectively and achieve visible results.
If you would like to find out more about this fantastic charity, please visit their website by clicking here.
We unfortunately live in a celeb obsessed culture where people can become famous for doing nothing of value. Instead of promoting good role models we’re bombarded with selfies of skinny, ‘perfect’ looking celebs and taught that beauty is only skin deep.
There’s one ‘celebrity’ though that puts her money where her mouth is, using her insane amount of fame to make a big difference in this world.
Most people probably don’t know a lot about Angelina Jolie’s other life. The majority of what we read about her is the tabloid fodder about ‘Brangelina’. With this article I want to highlight the stuff we should be reading about and the stuff we should know her for.
It’s probably unfair to call her a celebrity because as well as being an Oscar-winning film star and mother she is also a humanitarian – in fact she spends more of her time devoting it to others, giving a voice to the voiceless, than she does to making films.
She has worked for the UNHCR (United Nations Refugee Agency) for over ten years now, working tirelessly to highlight the plight of refugees and internally displaced persons in over 30 countries including Sudan, Afghanistan, Syria, Haiti, Somalia and Thailand. On all of her field missions over the years she has covered all of her costs and shares the same working and living conditions as the UNHCR field staff.
Her inspiration came from her own mother Marcheline Bertrand, a woman who never had an unkind word to say to or about anyone. On International Women’s Day in 2003, Bertrand produced a benefit concert for Afghan women refugees in conjunction with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, of which Jolie is now a Special Envoy. Sadly, Bertrand died in 2007.
Jolie and her mother Marcheline
Jolie says about her mother that “she was very clear that nothing would mean anything if I didn’t live a life of use to others. I didn’t know what that meant for a long time,” she said. “I came into this business young and worried about my own experiences and my own pain. And it was only when I began to travel and look and live beyond my home that I understood my responsibility to others.” In November last year Jolie was awarded an honorary Oscar, the Jean Hersholt award, for her humanitarian work.
Jolie’s acceptance speech
Here are some of the many reasons she’s an inspiration:
She puts her life on the line for those in need
On a recent trip to Afghanistan she revealed that she had written a farewell letter to Brad Pitt after being warned she was a target for attack.
She explained: ‘I had moments where I’ve been in a house and people have pounded on the doors and screamed at you and said, “We know she’s in there and we want her passport,” and I’ve had moments recently when I went to Afghanistan, and I’ve got off the plane thinking, this is fine.’
‘And then I got there and they said, “The people are very angry with you. They are angry that you are a woman and you are American and you are with UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), so you are the target”.
‘And so they gave me a briefing and they said everybody needs to write their blood type down.’
She added: ‘There’s a guy outside with a bulletproof vest, he put his passport in the vest, because he would be the one to take me out. I wrote a note to Brad in the process and figured if anything happens he’ll find it.
‘I was fine, but then two weeks later they did attack the UN and they killed everybody in the bunker.’
Angelina has set up and financed many charity organisations
In 2003, she founded the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation (after her first son, Maddox, who she adopted from Cambodia) which is dedicated to community development and environmental conservation in Cambodia.
In 2007 Jolie joined forces with economist Dr. Gene Sperling, Director of The Centre for Universal Education at the Council on Foreign Relations, and founded the Education Partnership for Children of Conflict, which funds education for children affected by man-made or natural disasters. Of the partnership Jolie said “Education can make the difference between whether children of conflict can turn to violence and despair, or whether they become the can be the new leaders of a better future for their families and nations.”
In 2008, she worked with Microsoft to set up the Kids in Need of Defense, a group of law firms and volunteers who have committed to giving legal counsel for immigrant kids in the US.
She spends millions of dollars of her own money helping others
Both Angelina and Brad dig deep when it comes to charity, with the pair donating millions and millions of their own money each year. Records from 2008 show the couple gave over $8m to charitable causes and in 2009 they gave at least $7m.
Jolie and Pitt in Bosnia
When Brad and Angelina’s twins, Knox and Vivienne, were born the couple sold the first images of the babies to People and Hello! for $14 million, using the entire amount to help fund the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation.
Last year Jolie announced that she had opened an all-girls primary school outside of war-torn Kabul, Afghanistan. The school educates between 200 and 300 Afghan girls, many of them refugees whose homes and villages have been destroyed in the years since the Taliban regime came to power. But now that the Taliban’s stronghold over the country has collapsed, people are hoping to resume normal life. Getting kids back to school every day is one way to do just that.
“Beyond enjoying the artistic satisfaction of designing these jewels, we are inspired by knowing our work is also serving the mutual goal of providing for children in need,” Jolie said.
“We launched this collaborative collection with the intent that 100 percent of the profits will go to charity,” Jolie’s long-time designing partner Procop said. “The beauty of these creations is matched by the beauty of spirit behind Angelina’s most heartfelt mission — to empower children in crisis.”
“Tivol, with their historic reputation and dedication to family values is a wonderful retail partner to launch our collection in the U.S.,” Jolie added.
If this business model proves successful, Jolie and Pitt, hope to fund more schools and educational initiatives in the places that need them most.
Angelina used her directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey, to highlight the horrors of the war in Bosnia. The war lasted from 1992 to 1995 and around 100,000 people were killed with up to 50,000 women being raped and 2.2 million people displaced.
Jolie and some of the cast of the film received threats due to making the film. At the movie’s premiere in Sarajevo, she said: ‘There were things sent to me, there were things posted online. The cast have never complained to me about these threats but I’ve heard through other people it was happening. One of them did have their windows smashed in on their cars and someone else had an issue when their phone was hacked and emails were sent out saying they were from them and saying they had been hurt.’
She gets involved in politics – and not in a bad way
Recently Angelina joined forces with William Hague to raise awareness about the use of rape as a weapon of war in conflicts. Hague had watched In the Land of Blood and Honey at the urging of his senior special adviser, Arminka Helic, a Bosnian who fled to the U.K. in 1992 to earn a Ph.D. Hague was struck by the power of the film. “I started this campaign with Angelina Jolie because foreign policy has got to be about more than just dealing with urgent crises—it has to be about improving the condition of humanity,” he said.
Jolie and Hague at the G8 in London
In Rwanda, up to 500,000 people were raped during the genocide 20 years ago. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, which Jolie and Hague visited a year ago as part of their campaign, there an estimated 200,000 surviving rape victims and the issue is still ongoing – it has in fact been called the ‘rape capital of the world’ and in 2011 it was estimated that around 1,000 women a day were raped. In Syria today there are thought to have been countless rapes but there are no approximate figures for this due to the taboo surrounding rape for Muslim women. Many do not report it or even tell their husbands or family.
They were recently at the G8 in London to talk about the £23million pledged towards tackling sexual violence in conflict zones around the world.
Angelina Jolie and William Hague in the Democratic Republic of Congo
At the end of last month they visited Bosnia where they to raise the awareness of the scale of rape during conflict. About 50,000 women, mostly Muslim, were raped during Bosnia’s inter-ethnic war in the 1990s and so far only 33 people have been convicted for the crimes by local courts and 30 by a UN war crimes tribunal ate the International Criminal Court in The Hague in the Netherlands.
Between 10 – 13th June, Hague and Jolie will host a four-day summit in London that will bring together governments from 141 countries. They aim to create irreversible momentum against sexual violence in conflict and promote practical action that impacts those on the ground (peacekeepers, police and the justice system).
Hague said that today “sexual violence is used deliberately as a weapon of war” in the conflicts in Syria, Central African Republic and South Sudan. He said: “I hope we can all work together to prevent the horrors seen in this region from being repeated in future conflicts anywhere in the world.”
She gives a voice to the voiceless
On World Refugee Day in June last year, Jolie did a report for CNN to bring to the attention the plight of the thousands of Syrian refugees. For many, being a refugee is like being in prison for a crime you didn’t commit, for you don’t know how long. Children in the camp suffer from diarrhoea, respiratory infections, high fever, ear infections and skin diseases, due to poor sanitation and hygiene. In winter the camps are constantly flooded due to rain and snow and in the summer the temperatures regularly top 100°F making living conditions in the dusty camp unbearable. Jolie yet again used her considerable fame to bring attention to a worthy cause.
She wrote about her double mastectomy in the hope that other women would benefit from her decision.
When Jolie discovered she had the BRCA1 faulty gene, giving her an 87 per cent risk of developing breast cancer and a 50 per cent risk of ovarian cancer, she took the brave decision to have a preventative double mastectomy. She wrote a moving op-ed piece for the New York Times about her decision in the hope that other women would benefit from her experience.
Brad Pitt said of his fiancé – ‘She’s faced her problems head on and found out her options to make the smartest decision for her, and she’s shared that knowledge with everyone else.
‘It’s important that this testing is not available for everyone and it should be, and that there are surgical options and everyone should have these options.’
‘I always want her by my side. Life will go on and we’re taking care of business as usual. We’re on the other side of that.
‘It’s the bravest thing and I get a little emotional about the act she did for our family and telling her story to others. She’s a very special woman.’
“There are no devils left in Hell, they are all in Rwanda”
– A missionary at the time of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide
Husband and wife team Alain and Dafroza Gauthier have spent the last 13 years working hard to hunt down the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide and bring them to justice. Mrs Gauthier’s mother and dozens of her relatives were murdered during the massacre and she learnt her mother had been shot by a Hutu general who later fled to Cameroon, where he died a free man. After this she promised herself she would seek justice for the hundreds of thousands of Tutsi victims who were killed in the genocide by Hutu extremists.
The Genocide came about as the result of almost a hundred years of high tensions between the two main ethnic groups in Rwanda – the ethnic Hutu majority and the ethnic Tutsi minority. They were thrown into years of rivalry by Belgian colonists who favoured the Tutsi’s, considering them superior to the Hutu’s, and enabling them to enjoy a far greater life. The Tutsi’s received better jobs and education and this built a bitter resentment amongst the Hutu population, but in the late 1950s they overthrew the Tutsi government, treating the minority Tutsi’s poorly for many years to come. In the early 1990s a full-scale civil war erupted and lasted for three years until a cease-fire was brokered after the international community put increasing pressure on the Hutu-led government of Juvenal Habyarimana. But on 6th April 1994, President Habyarimana was assassinated when his plane was shot down over the capital Kigali.
It is still not known to this day who shot the plane down. Hutu’s blamed the Tutsi’s for murdering President Habyarimana but some believe it could have been the Hutu’s themselves who carried it out in order to gain support for their growing plan to murder all of Rwanda’s Tutsi population.
Time Magazine covers the 1994 Rwandan Genocide
After the death of the President, the Interahamwe, a group of Hutu extremists, saw their opportunity to wipe out what they called the ‘cockroaches’ and gained the support of the Hutus in government, the local military and the mass media throughout Rwanda. They used the national radio stations to broadcast violent propaganda against the Tutsi’s and set up checkpoints throughout the country to stop those who tried to escape. With no one to stop them the Interahamwe put their plan into action and began the mass extermination of Tutsi’s and moderate Hutu’s. Over the next 100 days they murdered 800,000 men, women and children – that’s 8,000 people per day – butchering the majority of them to death with machetes.
Scenes like this were seen far and wide across the country
Mrs. Gauthier, born in 1954, grew up in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, where she met her husband in the early 1970s. He was there to teach French under a foreign aid program and a few years later, they met again in France where they married in 1977.
After settling in the French city of Reims and raising a family, they were living a comfortable life when the Genocide erupted in 1994. That’s when the calls started to come in… “We were glued to the telephone all day,” Mrs. Gauthier recalled. “People would tell us, ‘At X’s home, they’re all dead. They’ve been killed this morning.’ It didn’t mean anything anymore. I can’t express it with words. We were lost, we wondered whether it was true. Once we were there, we realised the magnitude of things when people we knew weren’t there anymore, and even their houses had disappeared.”
“Her life is my life. Her family is my family. It’s also my family that has been assassinated,” said Alain, 64, sitting next to his wife in their small home office where they work on cases. “We very quickly found ourselves looking into who was behind the massacres. This is a battle that has been imposed upon us and we’ll lead it as long as we have the strength to.”
In 2001, they travelled to Brussels for the trial of four Rwandans convicted of committing war crimes during the mass killings. There, the couple met the head of an association that searched for Rwandan fugitives in Belgium. “He told us, ‘Why don’t you do this in France? There are hundreds of them there,’ ” Mr. Gauthier said. “And so we did.”
The couple started visiting Rwanda, talking to survivors and collecting testimonies and set up an association, the Collective of Civil Plaintiffs for Rwanda, to have legal standing to file civil cases against fugitives.
Dominique Ntawukuriryayo
In 2004, the couple unmasked Dominique Ntawukuriryayo, living in Carcassonne, in southern France. Ntawukuriryayo was working in a church there and had founded Future Geniuses, a nongovernmental organisation to help children in Rwanda.
But although Ntawukuriryayo appeared to be a respected member of society, what many people didn’t realise was that he played a major role in the killing of as many as 25,000 Tutsi refugees in April 1994. Thanks to the Gauthier’s he was eventually extradited to Tanzania, where he was convicted on genocide charges in 2010 and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The couple also tracked down Sosthène Munyemana, another outwardly respected member of society, who worked as a gynecologist living in the southwest of France. He has never been convicted by the French even though in Rwanda, he is often referred to as the “butcher of Tumba” (Tumba is a district south of Butare) and is accused by local authorities and Interpol of murder and being involved in his country’s extermination plan against the Tutsis.
For 13 years the Gauthiers have worked tirelessly for justice, and it seems all their hard work has finally paid off because the French authorities have, for the very first time, brought to trial one of the suspects – Pascal Simbikangwa, a 54 year old former Rwandan Army Chief who is accused of supplying arms and instructions to the ethnic Hutu militia men who manned roadblocks in the capital and killed thousands of Tutsi men, women and children.
“It’s very significant because the genocide suspects will no longer find the safe haven in France that they have today,” Jacques Kabale, Rwanda’s ambassador to France, told Reuters.
Rwanda’s former justice minister Johnston Busingye declared: “This is history in the making.”
The Gauthiers found Simbikangwa, five years ago, at his home in the slums of Kaweni, a city on the island of Mayotte, a French territory in the Indian Ocean.
“The Gauthiers were alone, they fought, and their work is colossal,” said Maria Malagardis, a journalist for the newspaper Libération, who wrote a book, “On the Track of the Rwandan Killers,” about the couple.
The trial, which started on 4th February, will continue for the next 5 weeks.
Alain told the BBC: ‘We are simply citizens with a conscience, as the presence of Rwandan genocide suspects in France is intolerable for the families of victims. So without any [legal] knowledge we started this work and research. Once we discovered a suspect in France, we were obliged to go to Rwanda to find witnesses – in order to make a case. Those witnesses were either survivors or the killers themselves – those freed having served their terms and those who were still in prison gave us the best information.
‘Money has been a problem. In the beginning, we paid for our own travel, then the Collective of Civil Plaintiffs for Rwanda, which has about 150 members, helped us go. We have received some donations – but right now there is no real financial support. To find suspects, we have followed up leads from those who have told us that they suspected people in their area or university may have taken part in the genocide – this information arrived from different sources. Then it was up to us to verify it and if we had the means we’d go to Rwanda to investigate. It was a lot of work. For each case we have to go four or five times, staying often for two to four weeks.
‘I’d go to Rwanda in all my holidays – I was a teacher until I recently retired. It required a lot of translation work, which my wife mostly did, and then we would give the information to our lawyers who would take several months to prepare documents to be accepted by the justice system. Amongst the suspects we have discovered are three doctors, a priest, a former governor – most of them are respected members of society. It’s very difficult to know the true number of genocide suspects currently living in France – but so far we have filed complaints against about 25. Without the work of our organisation, the Collective of Civil Plaintiffs for Rwanda, and others who have helped us there would be no investigation of genocide suspects in France.
‘There has been no help from the government. Then there’s the work of the French justice system, which for a long time has dragged its feet and didn’t have the means to pursue and investigate these people. That changed two years ago… but from the government there has been no help. Trying genocide suspects is an occasion to remember the French government’s role in Rwanda in 1994. We think that there was on the part of that government, a diplomatic, financial and military complicity… so bringing that all up on French soil makes those formerly responsible uncomfortable – and some of them are still quite powerful. So it doesn’t bring pleasure to anyone, and it’s clear that until now we’ve received no support at all from the French political world.
Alain Gauthier, center, a French school teacher and creator of the Collective of Civil Plaintiffs for Rwanda, and his wife Dafroza Gauthier, right, arrive at Paris law court for the trial of Pascal Simbikangwa, a 54-year-old former Hutu intelligence chief, who faces charges of complicity in genocide and complicity in war crimes, at Paris law court, Tuesday Feb. 4, 2014. (AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere)
‘Pascal Simbikangwa is the first trial, which has come far too late. We just hope that it acts as a kind of incentive in French justice and that many others will soon be brought to trial. What we do, we do because we believe it is only justice that can give the victims who are no more the dignity that was taken away from them. We aim to do this “without hate or vengeance”, to take the expression of the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. What motivates us is essentially giving victims back their dignity’.
To donate to the Collective of Civil Plaintiffs for Rwanda so that the Gauthiers can continue to hunt down the murderers who elude justice, please click here.
To find out more about Collective of Civil Plaintiffs for Rwanda, click here.
How you can help
You can choose to help the Gauthier’s in many ways:
This week Hollywood star Gerard Butler visited Liberia, the second poorest country in the world, to volunteer for charity Mary’s Meals. He spent four days preparing and serving food to children, dancing with local villagers, playing football with the kids, taking a maths class of orphans, loading trucks with sacks of rice and planting pepper seeds and pineapples at a school garden.
The charity Mary’s Meals started in 1992 when two brothers Magnus and Fergus MacFarlane-Barrow, watched the Bosnian Conflict on the news with increasing horror. They were so moved that they decided to organise an appeal for food and blankets. Since then, Mary’s Meal has expanded and now feeds over 822,000 children worldwide.
The charity provides one meal a day in a place of learning to attract children to school so that they can receive an education whilst also being fed with what can sometimes be the only food the child will receive that day.
The costs involved? Well it costs just £10.70 to feed a child for a whole year… £10.70! That’s what struck me the most when finding out about Butler’s journey to Liberia and I know people are probably extremely hard up with it being Christmas time but by donating just £10.70 we can provide the very basics to a child and most likely make their year.
Mary’s Meals keeps their running costs down by purchasing locally produced food for use in the meals they serve which in turn supports the local economy (it respects local culture and food preferences) and it avoids incurring extra transport costs. They also do this by employing volunteers into every aspect of the organisation and by not wasting money on anything that is not absolutely necessary and because of this, 93p of every £1 you donate is spent directly on charitable activities.
On his visit to Liberia, Butler said: “Since 2010, I have come to know Mary’s Meals but had no idea of what that really meant. I have been struck by the strength of peoples’ dignity and what I love about Mary’s Meals is that it is all about retaining this.
They don’t operate a free system where people are just taking; instead it is all about respecting and promoting the lives of people, their culture, and what they are capable of.”
He added: “Every meal is a piece of charity and a little piece of love, and goes into the hearts of the children, feeding and nourishing them. That all passes down into the families and gives them a sense of hope and that is the difference between a kid saying, ‘I want to survive tomorrow’ and ‘I want to be a doctor’.
Over a decade since the war, I see communities full of resilience, integrity, warmth, love and hope. Mary’s Meals is like a little switch that helps flick it on.”
He added: “I wish people could spend one second that I’ve had here in these schools, with these families, as I do think anyone who has had that experience would get way more involved. There is such a direct link between a donation and a nutritious meal for a kid.
Mary’s Meals is helping kids get a great education, and in turn, a better education system can help lift a nation out of poverty.”
If you’d like to donate to Mary’s Meals please click here. Remember, just £10.70 can feed a hungry child for one whole year. It’s Christmas time so let’s remember those who need our help.
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