In 1994, Rwanda was the site of a horrific genocide that tore the country apart and had spill-over effects on its neighbours. That explosion of violence was the culmination of years of tensions and intermittent conflict between two of Rwanda’s main ethnic groups, the Hutu and Tutsi. Prior to gaining its independence from Belgium in 1962, the country had been led for many years by a Tutsi monarchy. A Hutu-led uprising in the late 1950s and early 1960s culminated in the abolition of the monarchy, which was replaced by a Hutu-dominated government that held power for several decades. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a dissident group, began to take shape in the late 1970s among exiled Tutsis in Uganda. In 1990, it launched an offensive against the Rwandan government, triggering a civil war that lasted until mid-1994. The Rwandan genocide was the final act of that conflict. This spate of violence, which lasted around 100 days – from early April until early July 1994 – claimed over 500,000 victims, mostly among the Tutsi minority. The genocide would sow the seeds of another bloody conflict that was to break out in 1996 in neighbouring Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Before the 1994 genocide started, the ICRC’s activities in Rwanda were coordinated out of our delegation in Kigali. From April 1994 onward, however, that was not possible given the chaotic situation; our Nairobi delegation took the reins with the support of logistics bases in Tanzania, Uganda, Zaire and Burundi. We did not evacuate our staff from Rwanda during the genocide, and their presence alone saved many lives. Our Kigali office, which remained open, served as a crucial source of first-hand information for the rest of the world. Our teams did their best to help those in need during the genocide. We delivered urgent medical services in Kigali from the start, helped set up an emergency hospital near Gitarama and provided medical supplies to facilities in various parts of the country throughout the year. We tripled the scope of our assistance programme from 4,000 tonnes of food in June to 12,000 tonnes per month from September to December. And to supplement the food aid that we were providing, we also implemented an emergency rehabilitation programme that included the distribution of seed and simple agricultural tools; staff members such as Christopher played an instrumental role in that programme. The genocide caused untold numbers of children to be separated from their parents – we registered some 37,000 unaccompanied children in Rwanda in 1994 alone. Lastly, our water and sanitation specialists built, repaired or upgraded water supply structures in the camps set up for displaced people and helped ensure the country’s main water treatment plants remained operational.