The resting place of the more than 800,000 people killed in the 1994 Rwanda genocide was among sites in three continents added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list as the United Nations cultural body ends a moratorium on considering memorial sites for human suffering.
The sites at Nyamata, Murambi, Gisozi, and Bisesero in Rwanda commemorating the mass killings of mainly Tutsi victims were “just inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list,” the organization posted on social media on Wednesday.
The four sites in Rwanda commemorate the genocide that targeted the Tutsi minority in large part but also moderate Hutus who were shot, beaten, or hacked to death by Hutu rebels between April and July of 1994.
Also included in the list were the World War I cemeteries in Belgium and France, as well as a former torture center in Argentina.
So far, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in Japan have been the only memorial sites inscribed on the UN’s cultural agency’s closely watched World Heritage list.
Read more here.
