About the Partnership

The Teaching Project
The journalism teaching partnership between Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication and its counterpart at the National University of Rwanda will

• build capacity;
• enhance media standards and freedom of expression in Rwanda; and
• work to instil a broader notion of the role of the media in society and as a civil society agent of reform and democratic development.

Faculty Collaboration
Through this faculty collaboration initiative, veteran Canadian journalists and journalism educators will take up short-term teaching positions in Butare to deliver journalism course material and to help to further develop the journalism curriculum now being delivered at Butare. Typically, the visiting Canadian teachers will be career journalists or journalism educators who will take up short-term teaching positions at Butare to deliver courses in intensive sessions. Carleton will administer and oversee the program and manage the curriculum development component.

Media Training Workshops
Carleton and NUR will also work together to deliver media training workshops to working journalists in Rwanda, primarily in Kigali. This media training program will be conducted in collaboration with the fledgling Great Lakes Media Institute, based in Kigali.

Forging the Future
Ideally, a model will emerge from the overall experience that will have application in other settings. And in a later phase, Carleton envisions establishing a full-fledged co-operation agreement with NUR that would facilitate student and faculty exchanges and other forms of collaboration.

The Carleton-NUR Journalism Project and the Rwandan Context

While the world stood by, the 1994 Rwanda genocide claimed the lives of an estimated 800,000 people in the space of 100 days.

The news media played a key role in the genocide.

There is abundant evidence that within Rwanda, the hate radio broadcasts of Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines were instrumental in fanning the flames; at times broadcasters gave direct instructions to death squads and ordinary citizens caught up in the killing frenzy.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 2003 rendered a landmark guilty verdict in the so-called “media trial’’ of three media executives charged with genocide and crimes against humanity. The news media were both implicated in and devastated by the genocide.

The Danish NGO International Media Support has consistently monitored the media scene in Rwanda since the genocide. In a January 2005 update, the organization recounted the damage to the media in Rwanda caused by the 1994 genocide. Forty-nine media professionals were murdered and 25 are currently in jail, accused of inciting or participating in the genocide.

Rwandan media, and the radio in particular have been striving to come out of the trauma ever since.