Reference :
V-P-CG-E-00157
Date :
16/07/2014
Caption :
Cuvette Department, Loukoléla. Two orphan sisters wait in the boat for the Congolese Red Cross volunteers that will bring them back to Rwanda.
Confidentiality level :
public
Publication restrictions :
publication without restrictions
Description :
The Congolese Red Cross delegates look for a third sister who has refused to go back to Rwanda because of influences from her foster father. He resisted the girls being taken away from him, as he saw them as a financial asset.
The sisters’ parents were Rwandan refugees who fled their country’s genocide in 1994. They met in a refugee camp in Congo Brazzaville and had four children, yet both of them fell ill with aids. The mother died when the girls were just babies and the father arrived in the village of Loukoléla, built for Rwandan refugees after the genocide, along the Congo River. He died a few years later and the girls, with no other relatives in the area, were entrusted to a family that has been using them as domestic servants. The family was reported to the ICRC and a case was opened to find any living relatives of the children. Through the ICRC’s global family tracing team, the girls’ maternal grandmother was found to be living at the periphery of Kigali and agreed to take them in and raise them. She heard about the search from a neighbour who had heard the announcement on the radio. The two sisters travelled two days by boat, one day by car, and on an airplane, back to the country of their roots, Rwanda.
Original material :
digital
Resolution :
5616x3744
Orientation :
landscape
Colour/B&W :
colour
