Drew University Recognizes 20th Anniversary of Rwanda Genocide Genocide Survivor and Advocate Will Speak on Drew’s Campus Speech by Eugenie Mukeshimana on April 16 is free and open to the public.

Madison, NJ - Eugenie Mukeshimana was a wife and a mother-to-be who had studied accounting in high school and lived in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city.

In 1994, when she was pregnant with her daughter, Mukeshimana’s life turned upside down. An ethnic Tutsi, she and her husband went into hiding to stay alive as Hutu extremists began a campaign of genocide that would eventually claim a million lives.

When it was over, Mikeshimana and her daughter survived, but she lost her husband, father, sister and many other family members. Over the years, Mukeshimana worked to rebuild her life and came to the United States in 2001 where she attended college and founded the Genocide Survivors Support Network. A resident of New Jersey, she travels around the United States to educate people about the genocide in Rwanda and serves as executive director of the network.

Drew University will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda with a program on April 16 featuring Mukeshimana as the guest speaker. Her 7 p.m. talk at Crawford Hall in the Ehinger Center is titled, “Twenty Years after the Genocide in Rwanda: A Survivor Reflects on the Journey Back from the Abyss.”

The program is co-sponsored by the Drew University Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study and the Pan-African Studies Program.