To accommodate school for Genocide studies

Plans are underway to expand the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, to enable it host a School of Genocide studies, memorial gardens and an open amphitheatre for screening genocide films, information from the City Council has revealed.

The Kigali City Council (KCC) in partnership with Aegis Trust, a British NGO which campaigns to prevent genocide worldwide and the National Commission against Genocide will today unveil the master plan of how the memorial, which is the biggest in the country, will look after the works.

"Expanding the memorial is very important because the more people the place can accommodate, the more they will reflect on what happened here during the Genocide,” said the Executive Secretary of the National Commission for the Fight against Genocide, Jean de Dieu Mucyo.

Currently, the centre, which is located in Gisozi, a Kigali suburb, is home to remains of an estimated 300,000 victims of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

The expansion plan was prepared by British architect John McAslan who arrived in the country yesterday to present his project which will turn the actual memorial into a new complex, KCC officials said in a statement. 

The new Kigali Memorial Complex will host a school of more than 50 students in genocide studies programmes, Memorial Gardens and River for visitors to contemplate the impact of the genocide ideology, and an amphitheatre which will present a venue for various educational films on genocides all over the world.

"It will really help because we are currently working with the university [National University of Rwanda] to introduce a Masters Programme in Genocide Studies,” Mucyo said.

An official of the Aegis Trust in Rwanda who also helps run the memorial told The New Times in a telephone interview said that the master plan to be presented at Serena Hotel will also reveal estimates of the money needed to begin construction.

"So far we are concentrated on having the master plan,” he said when asked to reveal estimated costs of the expansion project.

Thereafter, both government and the NGO will source out funds to implement the project, Freddy Mutanguha explained.

The centre which became operational in 2000 currently contains a cemetery, an exhibition house on Genocide section and a library.

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