Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T12:14:24.243Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The refugees of Rwanda seen through the eyes of a psychiatrist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

O. J. Rooke*
Affiliation:
75 Mornington Road, Greenford, Middlx UB6 9HN
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Rwanda was the most densely populated country in Africa. It is two-thirds the size of Switzerland but contained a larger population (9 million people), growing by almost 40% every two years. Few square inches are left uncultivated. The Tutsi people (never more than 14% of the population) are said to have arrived in the 14th century ad, bringing with them a feudal and totalitarian system of government. There was significant intermarriage with the result that today the Hutu and Tutsi people share the same language, cultural beliefs and religions (predominantly Catholic). In reality the terms Hutu and Tutsi now more accurately describe caste than ethnicity (Delcros, 1994).

Type
Briefings
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1995

References

Cook, R. (1995) The danger of another Rwanda. Independent On Sunday, 9th April.Google Scholar
Delcros, L. (1994) La Question Ethnique au Rwanda. Brussels: Brureau International de Médecins sans Frontières.Google Scholar
King, M. (1990) Health is a sustainable state. Lancet 336, 664667.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
King, M. (1993) Demographic entrapment. Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 87, (suppl. 1), 2328.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Russell, C. & Russell, W. M. S. (1968) Violence, Monkeys and Man. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.