The Rwandan Genocide: Beyond Borders (Part 8)

Rwanda's recovery from genocide presents one of history's most profound paradoxes – a nation that rebuilt itself with remarkable efficiency while simultaneously destabilizing an entire region. This final episode of our Rwandan series reveals how the aftermath of genocide sparked what became known as "Africa's World War," a conflict that would ultimately claim over 5 million lives.

When millions of Rwandans fled to neighboring Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1994, they didn't just create a refugee crisis – they established a dangerous parallel state. The same authorities who orchestrated genocide now controlled refugee camps, using humanitarian aid to rebuild their forces and launch cross-border attacks. Meanwhile, inside Rwanda, Paul Kagame's government pursued a dual strategy: relentless focus on economic recovery and infrastructure development alongside increasingly authoritarian political control.

We witness how Rwanda's legitimate security concerns about génocidaires r
This complex legacy extends beyond regional politics to fundamental questions about international responsibility. Rwanda's tragedy forced the global community to develop the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine, challenging traditional notions of sovereignty – yet the application of these principles remains inconsistent and problematic. The machinery of genocide was dismantled in Rwanda, but the machinery of global indifference proved more resistant to fundamental change.

Chapters

• 0:00 Rwanda's Tragedy Beyond Borders
• 5:41 Rwanda's Recovery and Reconstruction
• 10:53 The Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Crisis
• 14:17 Africa's World War Begins
• 19:57 International Justice and Responsibility
• 27:31 Rwanda's Legacy and Global Impact
• 33:53 Personal Reflections and Closing Thoughts

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

At the border between Rwanda and what was then still called Zaire. Dawn mist hangs over the water. We're in Lake Kivu, august 1994. The mist softens over the outlines of thousands of makeshift shelters that stretch along the shoreline. This isn't just a refugee camp. It's a city of exile, home to over two million Rwandans who fled as the RPF advanced. Among them is a former school teacher. We'll call him Theodore. He sits at the edge of the water watching as aid workers unload sacks of grain from a truck. Six weeks ago he was manning a roadblock in Gisenji. Now he's keeping a list of who, in his section of the camp, receives food donations. The administrative skills at one's organized killing have been seamlessly transferred to managing displacement. We're building a government in exile, he tells a French journalist who's interviewing camp residents. We'll return to reclaim Rwanda. Behind him, men who were once inter-Hawaii militia members drill in the forest hidden from UN observers. In their pockets, many still carry the identity cards of people that they killed. The journalist nods, recording this statement without challenge. Her photographer captures the scene.

Speaker 1: 1:39

Desperate refugees, humanitarian crisis, biblical exodus the narrative is compelling and sympathetic. But the report won't mention is that this camp, like dozens of others along the border, isn't just housing refugees. It's incubating the next chapter of violence Across the lake. In Rwanda itself, a survivor named Anonsiara is being appointed a local magistrate. In Kibuye, the justice system is being rebuilt from scratch, with women filling roles traditionally held by men, most of whom are either dead, in exile or in prison awaiting trial for genocide. Exile or in prison awaiting trial for genocide. She has no formal legal training, but she can read, write and has a reputation for fairness. This is enough in a country where over 90% of the professional class has vanished. We don't have the luxury of perfect solutions, she tells her community at her swearing-in. We have only the necessity of continuing. These two scenes, separated by a lake but connected by history, capture the fundamental reality we'll explore today. Rwanda's tragedy didn't end at its border. The consequences rippled outwards, destabilizing an entire region, triggering conflicts that would claim millions more lives and challenging the international community to confront its failures in ways both productive and problematic.

Speaker 1: 3:20

This is the final episode of our series on the Rwandan genocide Beyond Borders. You know how they say you can't understand someone until you walk a mile in their shoes. Well, I'd argue, you can't understand a nation until you've walked through its history, not just the highlight reel or the sanitized version you find in textbooks. I mean really getting into its DNA, those defining moments that shaped everything that came after, those moments where paths were chosen, where decisions were made in palaces and backrooms and city streets that changed the course of millions of lives. I'm your host, paul, and this is Double Helix Blueprint of Nations, where we unravel the genetic code of countries through their most transformative moments. Think of it like ancestry testing, but for entire nations. We dig deep into the historical DNA, finding those crucial moments that made countries who they are today. Welcome to our final episode in this exploration of Rwanda's complex DNA.

Speaker 1: 4:48

Today, we'll trace how the aftermath of genocide transformed not just Rwanda but the entire Great Lake regions of Central Africa. We'll witness how the failure to deal with the architects of genocide after they fled to Zaire would spark Africa's World War, a conflict that would ultimately claim over 5 million lives. We'll examine how Rwanda's recovery would both inspire and trouble the international community, and we'll consider what this complex legacy means for our understanding of justice, intervention and the long shadow cast by historical failures. This story is more than just about what happened after the genocide. It's about how the machinery that enabled mass killing was dismantled in one place, only to be reassembled elsewhere and about the price of peace in a region shaped by violence. Let me take you to a meeting that captures the beginning of this story.

Speaker 1: 5:45

We're in a tent in Mugunga refugee camp, just across the Rwandan border in Zaire. It is September 1994. Around a makeshift table sit several men who just months earlier were ministers in the government that orchestrated genocide. They're meeting with Mobutu Seseseko's intelligence officials. The topic Reorganizing their forces for an eventual return to Rwanda. We have over 50,000 former military and militia in camps, explains a former Rwandan government official. With proper support we can take back our country. The Zairean official nods. Mobutu sees these genociders not as war criminals but as useful proxies in regional politics. They share a common enemy Paul Kagame's new government in Rwanda. This faithful alliance would set in motion a cascade of violence that would eventually engulf the entire region.

Speaker 1: 6:55

But to understand how this happened, we need to examine three interlocking stories what was happening inside Rwanda, what was developing in refugee camps and how the international community responded to both. Let's start with inside Rwanda itself, where the RPF government faced the monumental task of rebuilding a shattered nation. The statistics were staggering Approximately anywhere from 800,000 to 1 million dead, over 2 million refugees fled abroad, another 2 million internally displaced, infrastructure destroyed, government coffers emptied and a population deeply traumatized. In Kigali, the new government moved quickly to establish control and begin reconstruction. Kagame, though officially only vice president, behind President Pastore Bizimungo, was the de facto ruler, a position he would formally assume in the year 2000. His approach combined remarkable pragmatism with troubling authoritarianism, an ambiguity that would define Rwanda's recovery.

Speaker 1: 8:14

Let me take you to a planning meeting in late 1994 that captures this duality. We're in a government office in Kigali. Kagame is meeting with economic advisors by rebuilding Rwanda's coffee industry, the backbone of its economy. The discussion is strikingly technocratic, focused on production targets, export markets, quality control. There's no mention of ethnicity, no revolutionary rhetoric, just the practical details of economic recovery. We cannot feed our people with liberation slogans, kagame tells his team. We need functioning farms, reopen businesses, repair roads. This technocratic approach would become the hallmark of Rwanda's recovery, focused on tangible results rather than ideological purity. But there was another side to this pragmatism.

Speaker 1: 9:14

In the same period, rpf units were conducting revenge killings in areas where genocide had been particularly intense. A UN investigator documented at least 30,000 such killings. When confronted with this evidence, an RPF official responded with chilling candy. We had to establish control. Some excesses were inevitable. This ambiguity between remarkable rebuilding and troubling repression would define Rwanda's recovery. Economic growth, healthcare improvements and infrastructure development proceeded at an impressive pace. Women gained unprecedented roles in governance. The physical signs of genocide would clear it away with remarkable efficiency. Yet alongside this visible progress, there was a quiet tightening of political control. Opposition was increasingly equated with divisionism, a serious charge in post-genocide Rwanda. Media freedoms were curtailed. A particular narrative of the genocide became the official story, but alternative perspectives increasingly marginalized. As one Rwandan intellectual put it, we traded the freedom to disagree for the security to exist After what we experienced. Was that a bad bargain? I still don't know.

Speaker 1: 10:45

While Rwanda was rebuilding, a different and darker process was unfolding across the border. The refugee camps in eastern Zaire had become states within a state, controlled by the same authorities who had presided over genocide, now reinventing themselves as legitimate representatives of Rwanda in exile. Let me take you inside this parallel world. We are now in Kimbuya Camp late 1994. Former commune leaders, same local officials who had organized killing squads months earlier, are now organizing food distribution. Former Inter-Hawaii militia members serve as camp security. The administrative hierarchy of genocide has been preserved almost intact, just relocated across an international border.

Speaker 1: 11:40

A humanitarian worker from Médecine Sans Frontières described the surreal experience. I'm treating patients who, I strongly suspect, participated in mass murder. They know, I know, I know, they know, I know. Yet we maintain this fiction that they're simply refugees deserving aid. Meanwhile, at night, we hear military training in the forest beyond the camp's perimeter. The camps became bases for cross-border raids into Rwanda. Former FAR soldiers and inter-Hawa militiamen would attack Tutsi survivors, kill witnesses to their crimes and undermine Rwanda's recovery. By 1996, these incursions had become so frequent and deadly that they threatened the stability of Rwanda's fragile peace.

Speaker 1: 12:34

What made the situation particularly troubling was the role of international aid. The same global community that had failed to prevent genocide was now, however, unwittingly supporting its perpetrators. Food aid was taxed by camp authorities to buy weapons. Medical supplies meant for civilian refugees were diverted to military units. A humanitarian imperative to help refugees had created the perverse outcome of sustaining those responsible for making them refugees in the first place. Those responsible for making them refugees in the first place. A UN official conducting an assessment in late 1995 captured this dilemma perfectly. We're facing an impossible choice. If we continue providing aid, we're supporting the people who committed genocide. If we withdraw aid, we condemn innocent civilians to suffering and death. There's no moral clarity here, only competing horrors. This volatile situation could not last. By 1996, rwanda's patience with cross-border attacks was exhausted.

Speaker 1: 13:47

But rather than directly invading Zaire, a move that would have invited international condemnation, kagame's government pursued a more sophisticated strategy. They helped organize and support Congolese rebels who had their own grievances against Mobutu's regime. Let me take you to a pivotal meeting that changed the region's history. We are in Kigali in August of 1996. In a heavily guarded building, kigali is meeting with Loren de Serra Kabila, a long-time Congolese rebel leader who had been fighting Mobutu since the 1960s, though with little success. Also present are representatives from Uganda and Angola, countries that also had reasons to want Mobutu gone. We have a common enemy, kagame tells Kabila. We will provide you with the support to remove him. What Kagame doesn't explicitly state is that this alliance has another purpose creating a legitimate proxy force to dismantle the refugee camps harboring genocidaires. This meeting birthed what would be called the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire, the AFDL, ostensibly a Congolese rebel movement, but in reality a multinational effort to reshape regional politics.

Speaker 1: 15:17

By October 1996, this alliance launched its first attack on the refugee camps in eastern Zaire. What followed was both a humanitarian catastrophe and a strategic success. The camps were violently dismantled. Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled again, many returning to Rwanda, others escaping deeper into Sayyir's vast interior. Among those fleeing were the architects of genocide, now losing their human shields and base of operations. A humanitarian worker described the scene the camps emptied overnight. People were running in every direction. Some were clearly ex-FAR, still in partial uniforms. Others, though, were women, children and the elderly people who had followed orders to flee Rwanda in 1994 and were now fleeing again. The distinction between perpetrator and victims, never clear in this crisis, became even more blurred. But the alliance didn't stop at the dismantling of the camps. They continued westwards. Their ambitions expanded with each success.

Speaker 1: 16:36

What began as a limited operation against refugee camps transformed into a full-scale revolution by May 1997, kabila's forces, heavily supported by Rwanda. In 1997, kabila's forces, heavily supported by Rwanda, had marched across the entire country and overthrown Mobutu. Zaire was renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kabila installed as president. This should have been the end of this story, a neat resolution to the security dilemma created by the refugee camps, but history is rarely so tidy. The seeds of the next conflict are already being planted. Kabila, now firmly established as president, is meeting with his cabinet. Fourteen months after taking power with Rwanda's help, he's about to make a fateful announcement All Rwandan military advisors must leave Congo immediately. This betrayal reflected a harsh reality. Kabila had been a useful proxy for Rwanda, but now saw its continued influence as a threat to his own power. He began making alliances with ex-FAR members and inter-Hawaii militias, the very people Rwanda had sought to neutralize by supporting him. Rwanda's response was swift and dramatic A direct invasion of eastern Congo, this time without pretense. Uganda joined them. Angola, zimbabwe and Namibia sided with Kabila.

Speaker 1: 18:13

What began as Rwanda's attempt to secure its border against genocidal forces had now escalated into Africa's World War, a conflict that would eventually involve nine countries and dozens of armed groups. From 1998 to 2003, this war raged across the Congo. The human cost was staggering An estimated 5.4 million deaths, mostly from disease and starvation rather than direct violence. The conflict combined conventional warfare guerrilla operations. The conflict combined conventional warfare, guerrilla operations and proxy struggles, creating what the UN official later called possibly the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II.

Speaker 1: 18:58

For Rwanda, this period presented a profound contradiction. Inside its borders, the country was becoming a model of development, with impressive economic growth, improved healthcare and relative stability. Women were gaining unprecedented political representation. Infrastructure was being built. Visitors to Kigali found clean streets, low crime and efficient governance. Yet across the border, rwanda was deeply implicated in a devastating conflict. Its troops and proxies were accused of widespread human rights abuses. Its officials profited from illegal mineral extraction from Congolese mines. The government that was rebuilding one nation was contributing to the destruction of another. A Congolese villager captured this bitter irony. Rwanda found its peace by exporting its war to us.

Speaker 1: 19:56

This regional crisis unfolded against a backdrop of international soul-searching about the failures to prevent Rwanda's genocide. The UN, the United States, france, belgium, the UN, the United States, france, belgium all were conducting internal reviews, issuing reports and making pronouncements about lessons learned. Yet as these words were being spoken, the international community was demonstrating an uneven commitment to this principle. The same powers that had failed Rwanda were now responding to its aftermath with a mix of genuine reform effort and self-interested geopolitics. The most tangible outcome was the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the ICTR.

Speaker 1: 20:42

In Arusha, tanzania, in a courtroom in 1998, jean-paul Akayesu, a former mayor, is facing charges of genocide and crime against humanity. What makes this trial historic isn't just that Akayesu would be convicted, becoming the first person ever found guilty of genocide by an international tribunal, but that the court recognized sexual violence as an instrument of genocide. A survivor testified he told Interahawit us completely, not just our bodies, but our dignity, our humanity, our place in the community. This legal recognition that rape could be not just a byproduct of conflict but a deliberate genocidal strategy represented a significant evolution in international law. The suffering of Rwandan women had created a precedent that would shape prosecution of war crimes globally.

Speaker 1: 21:51

Yet alongside these advances in international justice, other responses to Rwanda's crisis revealed continued self-interest and inconsistency. France, for instance, launched Operation Turquoise ostensibly to protect civilians, as we heard before, but in practice it created a safe zone that allowed many genocidaires to escape to Zaire. Years later, french officials would continue to resist full accountability for their role, both before and during the genocide. The United States, having actively avoided intervention during the genocide, as we learn, became a strong supporter of Rwanda's new government, seeing in Kagame a strategic ally and a success story that could partially redeem his earlier failures. This support continued even after evidence of Rwanda's destructive role in the Congo.

Speaker 1: 22:46

A State Department official explained this contradiction with striking candor in a closed-door meeting we failed Rwanda once we're determined not to criticize them too harshly now, even when their actions trouble us. It's a form of moral debt repayment the increasingly authoritarian nature of Kagame's rule, the limitation on press freedoms, the harassment of opposition. The same donors who expressed concern about democratic deficits elsewhere seem willing to accept Rwanda's development-without-democracy model. A Rwandan activist, speaking anonymously, described this contradiction. We're trapped in a narrative of the model genocide survivor. Western guilt means donors accept restrictions they wouldn't tolerate elsewhere. You see Kagame as a man who stopped the genocide, so they overlook how he's stopping political competition too.

Speaker 1: 23:46

This complex interplay between genuine admiration for Rwanda's development achievements and discomfort with its political model continue to shape international engagement with the country. Rwanda has leveraged the moral authority that comes from having survived genocide to create a unique space in global politics, one where its internal governance receives less scrutiny than its impressive development metrics might otherwise warrant. As the series concludes, let's return to where we began, with the double helix of Rwanda's national DNA. Throughout these episodes, we've traced how colonial classifications twisted with local power struggles to create the conditions for genocide, witness how ordinary people became killers, how international actors enabled through inaction, and how a society shattered by violence attempted to rebuild itself. But perhaps the most important legacy of Rwanda's tragedy is how it transformed our understanding of international responsibility. The phrase never again has been repeated.

Speaker 1: 25:02

After the Holocaust, after Cambodia, after Bosnia, rwanda exposed the hollow center of that promise, revealing how geopolitical interests, bureaucratic inertia and simple cowardice could still allow mass atrocity to unfold in full view of the global audience. In response to this moral failure, the international community developed the concept of the responsibility to protect the principle that sovereignty entails the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. When a state fails in this responsibility, the international community must be prepared to take collective action. For the first time, the international community formally accepted that sovereignty was not absolute when mass atrocities were being committed. The ghost of those abandoned in Rwanda's churches and hillsides forced a reconsideration of the world's most fundamental organizing principle. Yet the application of this doctrine has been uneven at best. In Libya, it was invoked to justify intervention, with controversial results. In Syria, despite comparable atrocities, the international community remained largely paralyzed. In Myanmar, despite clear evidence of crimes against the Rohingya population, actions have been limited and ineffective. Rwanda's legacy thus remains contest contested, having inspired important normative changes, while also revealing the persistent gap between principles and practice in international relations. The machinery of genocide was dismantled in Rwanda, but the machinery of global indifference proved more durable, more adaptable, more hesitant and more resistant to fundamental change.

Speaker 1: 27:05

Here's a final moment. We're back in Niyamata at a genocide memorial in April 2019, the 25th commemoration of the genocide. Survivors and their descendants gather alongside international dignitaries. The ritual of remembrance is well established by now the lighting of flames, the naming of victims, the testimonies of witnesses. Paul Kagame, still president after 25 years, addresses the crowd. Rwanda was supposed to disappear as a nation, but we have persisted. Those who doubted us, those who abandoned us, those who continue to underestimate us they do not define us. We define ourselves.

Speaker 1: 27:58

This declaration captures the remarkable resilience of Rwanda's recovery from the ashes of genocide. The country has built a functional state, achieved impressive development gains and established a global presence far beyond what might be expected from a small, landlocked nation. Yet the commemoration also reveals the limitations of this recovery. The narrative of genocide is tightly controlled, alternative perspectives are marginalized or criminalized, political opposition remains severely constrained and across the border in Congo, the aftershocks of Rwanda's tragedy continue to reverberate in ongoing conflicts, displacement and suffering. As a survivor. Watching the ceremony reflects we have built something from nothing, this is true, but what have we built exactly and at what cost? These questions we are still not free to ask openly. Rwanda's double helix, the intertwined strands of remarkable recovery and troubling authoritarianism, of impressive development and regional destabilization, of moral authority and practical compromise, continue to shape not just this small nation but our understanding of how societies recover from mass atrocity, how international responsibilities exercise and how the past is carried into the future. As we close this series, perhaps the most important question isn't whether Rwanda represents a success or a failure. It's whether we, as a global community, have truly absorbed the lessons it offers about human capacity for both destruction and rebuilding, about the consequences of action and inaction, and about the long shadows cast by historical failures.

Speaker 1: 30:18

Just as we conclude our exploration of Rwanda, another tragedy was unfolding across the world, one that would raise hauntingly similar questions about identity, memory and international responsibility. In a region that had once prided itself on multicultural coexistence, ancient hatreds were being reawakened by modern ambitions. Sarajevo, a city where mosques, cathedrals and synagogues had shared skylines for centuries, was about to become synonymous with urban warfare and ethnic cleansing. The collapse of Yugoslavia would reveal that Rwanda's lessons about the weaponizations of identity weren't unique to Africa or to so-called tribal conflicts. They were universal human vulnerabilities waiting to be exploited by those who would profit from division. As we'll explore in our next series, the forces that tore apart the Balkans share a chilling kinship with those that we've traced through Rwanda's double helix, proving once again that the distance between civilizations and barbarianism is never as great as we pretend to be.

Speaker 1: 31:41

Before we wrap up this series, I need to take a moment for some absolutely essential thank yous. First, to Mrs Double Helix once again, who has endured countless dinner conversations about genocide machetes and the failures of the UN Security Council. I promise our next date night will involve zero discussions about mass atrocities, unless, of course, you bring it up first. Then I'm obliged to explain your patience with my research, with my sudden proclamations about Belgian colonial administrations while we're grocery shopping, has been nothing short of heroic sort of heroic To our supporters, you magnificent history nerds who somehow find value in this deep dives into humanity's darkest chapters. Thank you for keeping this show alive.

Speaker 1: 32:28

Special shout out to anyone who has rated our podcast and who makes it possible for me to spend time disappearing into books, into reading and emerging from historical nightmares to share with all of you and to everyone listening, whether you've been here since our series on the Colombian conflict began for season two our first episode on George Washington or you just stumbled across this show while searching for something completely different, and we are now deeply concerned about my mental health. Thank you for walking through these difficult paths with me. If you found value in these explorations, I do have a small ask Tell someone about this show, not just anyone. Find that friend who always has a random historical fact at parties, who reads nonfiction for fun, who is curious about why the world is the way it is. Send them an episode. Warn them that it's not exactly cheerful material sometimes, but promise them it's worth the emotional investment. The algorithms that rule our digital lives don't always know what to do with a show about the historical DNA of nations. So word of mouth from passionate listeners like you is how we grow, and if you're feeling particularly generous, leave a review where you get your podcasts. Write something witty that makes me look good, or just copy and paste whatever works for you. This show made me cry in public while commuting Five stars. If that's what you want to write, that's fine, it works.

Speaker 1: 34:03

Before we conclude this series, though, I'd like to speak to you directly, not as a narrator of history, but simply as someone who has spent some time now immersed in the Rwandan story. When I began researching this series, I expected to find answers, clear lessons that could be packaged and presented. Instead, I found questions that had followed me home each night, that have sat with me at the dinner table and that sometimes have kept me awake. What happens when we decide that some people are fundamentally different from others? What machinery of dehumanization do we construct, often without realizing, and how quickly can it be turned towards destruction? In our previous series on the Spanish Civil War, we witnessed how neighbors who had lived side by side for generations could be transformed into mortal enemies through the power of ideology and identity. I didn't kill a man. One nationalist soldier told his priest during confession I killed a red. That mental recategorization from human to other was the essential first step towards violence. In Rwanda, this process reached its terrible endpoint. Those identity cards we discussed in episode 2 weren't just administrative tools. They were physical manifestations of a mindset that said you are fundamentally different from me. The rest, as we've seen, followed with horrifying logic.

Speaker 1: 35:44

I find myself looking at our world today, at the casual dehumanization that fills our social media, feeds our political discourse, our everyday conversations, and I feel a chill of recognition day conversations, and I feel a chill of recognition. We are not immune to Rwanda's disease. You know, none of us are. When we speak of those who vote differently, worship differently, look differently or come from somewhere else, as though they are an existential threat, we're laying the first bricks in a structure that, once completed, could imprison all of us. When we accept rhetoric that reduces complex human beings to simple categories like illegal, radical elite, deplorable, we're speaking a language that has preceded atrocity throughout human history. We're speaking a language that has preceded atrocity throughout human history.

Speaker 1: 36:40

The ethnographers who first created rigid categories in Rwanda didn't intend genocide. The colonial administrators who formalized those distinctions didn't envision machetes in churches. The politicians who embraced those divisions for short-term gain couldn't imagine what their rhetoric would lead. But, bit by bit, year by year, they constructed a machine that, once activated, did exactly what it was designed to do, even if that design was unconscious. In my time studying this mass atrocity and other mass atrocities, I have found no monsters, only humans who made choices that allowed them to see other humans as something less than themselves, and that capacity lives in all of us.

Speaker 1: 37:38

Rwanda's story matters, not because it's exceptionally foreign, but because it's exceptionally familiar. The DNA of division, the blueprint of dehumanization, these aren't artifacts from a distant land. They're present in our communities, our discourse, perhaps even in our own thoughts. I don't share this to paralyze us with guilt or fear, to awaken in us a responsibility. Just as machetes can be turned into tools for rebuilding, as we saw in our last episode, our capacity for categorization can be redirected towards recognizing our shared humanity rather than our differences. Never again has become a hollow phrase, now repeated after each atrocity while we allow the conditions for the next one to develop. Perhaps a more honest pledge would be always vigilant, a commitment to notice the small steps that precede the larger horrors, to interrupt the seemingly innocent categorizations that enable later violence.

Speaker 1: 38:47

I began this series with a simple premise you can't understand a nation until you walk through its history. I end it with a question that I hope follows you as it has followed me what will we do differently? The answer, I believe, isn't in grand gestures or perfect solutions. It's in small daily choices to see the full humanity of those we could easily dismiss. It's in resisting rhetoric that divides the world into us and them. It's in remembering Rwanda, not as a distant tragedy, but as a mirror that reflects possibilities within our own societies.

Speaker 1: 39:31

If there's one thing that I hope you take from our journey through Rwanda's double helix is this History doesn't simply happen to societies. We build it choice by choice, word by word, brick by brick, and what we build we can choose to build differently. Thank you for joining us. This has been Double Helix Blueprint of Nations. Thank you for walking this difficult path with me and join us for the next series as we turn our attention to the Balkans, where another society's unraveling will reveal troubling echoes of what we've witnessed in Rwanda and perhaps offer new insights into how fragile the foundation of peace truly is. Until then. Thank you for listening. We will see you soon. ©. Transcript Emily Beynon.