AFRICA

Veneranda Nzambazamariya

Leader of Rwanda’s Women’s Movement

“Like Martin Luther King, the women of Rwanda had a dream: that that nightmare will never happen again, in Rwanda and elsewhere.”

In 1994 more than a million people were killed in what the current Rwanda government calls “the fastest and most vicious genocide yet recorded in human history.” Vernanda Nzambazamariya was among a handful of women who, immediately after the genocide, urged Rwandan women to rise above ethnic differences and come together to rebuild the country.

Nzambazamariya, born in 1958, was a founding member of Reseau des Femmes and Pro-Femmes Twese Hamwe (“All Together”) two dynamic women’s organizations in Rwanda. She was active in promoting women’s issues throughout the continent and was a committed member of the Women's Committee for Peace and Development.

Nzambazamariya dedicated herself to empowering women politically and economically and to restructuring Rwanda’s political, economic and social infrastructures and laws that were biased against women.

Veneranda Nzambazamariya died in a Kenya Airways crash in January 2000. The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) posthumously awarded her the Millennium Peace Prize for Women in 2001.