Photo: Chhavi Sharma, Lifeline Energy 2009

When I first heard the term “child- headed household” in the context of Rwanda, I thought immediately of course of the genocide and of the countless orphaned children left to care for younger siblings. As we prepare to mark 15 years since catastrophic event which left a million children orphaned, the phenomenon of child-headed households is not subsiding – children continue to be orphaned as a direct consequence of acts committed during the genocide. The area we were in today is especially affected – Bugasera district is an area where many Tutsi families were settled following a government programme in the 1950s and consequently was heavily targeted during the genocide. Today’s children are dealing with the effects of the incredibly high number of rapes that occurred. Bugasera now has high rates of HIV/ AIDS and most of the children we were meeting were orphaned because of it. Some had been orphans for as little as two years, while others for as long as ten years.