Genocide has profound effects on humanity that go beyond its primary victims, to those conceived during this extremely stressful time. Rape was used systematically as a weapon of genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994; 350,000 women were raped and between 2,000 and 10,000 children were born as a result. Limited attention has been given to the lived experience of the offspring conceived through genocidal rape. Yet, this population might endure significant effects of the genocide and genocidal rape throughout their lives, including high risk of early onset of poor mental and physical conditions.
I summarized the current knowledge via an integrative systematic review of the lived experience of the offspring conceived through genocidal rape. I then conducted a cross-sectional study in Rwanda, using multiple measures including adverse childhood experience and self-reported mental and physical health outcomes to characterize the adult phenotypes and estimate health disparities among the offspring of genocide survivors (aged 24 years) conceived through genocidal rape compared to age- and sex-matched offspring of genocide survivors conceived during the genocide, but not of rape age- and sex-matched offspring of women who were out of the country during genocide.
The integrative review revealed that the offspring conceived through rape grapple with their identities as the children of rape perpetrators, often receive poor health care early in life and experience higher rates of mental health problem and discrimination, thus carrying an intergenerational legacy of their mothers’ rape. The cross-sectional study demonstrates that: 1) Rwandan young adults conceived during the genocide compared to sex- and age-matched young adults who were not exposed to genocide have significantly poorer mental and physical health outcomes; and 2) young adults conceived by genocidal rape compared to those exposed to genocide only had additional burdens of poorer mental and physical health outcomes; and 3) the effects of these prenatal exposures were moderated by accumulated adverse childhood experiences.
Further studies could focus on mechanistic pathways linking the exposures to outcomes, and prospective studies would allow to better grasp health change as this population ages and determine whether and how genocidal trauma passes to the next generation
