TARGET AUDIENCE

The target audience of the Global Youth Genocide Prevention Forum includes Youth from Rwandan, Uganda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Kenya and International youth. The authors of the genocide achieved their goal by using the youth. Yet young people also became victims of genocide during and after the genocide.

Today we recognize that the youth, both in the national and international contexts, are a potential force for the prevention of genocide. If young people around the world are aware of past genocides and have a level of individual engagement with the horror genocide entails, they are more likely to speak out if genocide occurs again. Young people represent a significant active portion of the world demography and they should be encouraged to initiate projects for peace and genocide prevention. Genocide happened to the Jews, Bosinians, Alminans, Cambodia, former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and now it is happening in Sudan (Darfur). In each of these cases it is the sons and daughters of this global village that are used and set to exterminate their own brothers and sisters

In the context of Rwanda, there is evidence that a significant number of young people participated in the 1994 genocide. Most of them are now in prisons, or are in the jungles of Democratic Republic of Congo. They are victims of the situation created for them by myopic and greedy political manipulators. On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of young people lost their lives; while many of those who survived were torture, raped, traumatized, infected by HIV/AIDS.