Some 16 years later, the Second World War broke out, one of whose consequences was the coinage of the term ‘genocide’.
The terrible reality behind the word has shaped Mushikiwabo’s life, as it has that of her country since 1994. Her brother Landoald Ndasingwa, a businessman and politician, was killed on the first day of the Rwandan genocide.
Mushikiwabo’s invitation to speak at Chatham House was centred on the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), to which she was elected secretary-general in 2018, but the failures of the international system in Rwanda and neighbouring countries quickly surfaced in the discussion.