European Breakfast with Marguerite Barankitse, President of Maison Shalom
“Breaking Cycles of Trauma in Africa: from Genocide to Refuge”
Performed activity
CIDOB, sala Jordi Maragall, c/Elisabets 12, 08001 Barcelona
CIDOB with the collaboration of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona
CIDOB, with the collaboration of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, organises a new European Breakfast-Jaime Arias on February 20 with the participation of Marguerite Barankitse, president of Maison Shalom,as a special guest. She will be presented by the AMB Vice-president for International Relations and Cooperation, Alfred Bosch.
After rescuing 25 children from a massacre she was forced to witness during the tragic conflicts between Hutu and Tutsi in Burundi in 1993, Marguerite “Maggy” Barankitse founded Maison Shalom, an NGO to provide access to healthcare, education, and culture to over 20,000 children. However, she has been forced into exile from her country since 2015. Far from surrendering, Marguerite Barankitse decided to dedicate all her energy to help more than 90.000 Burundian refugees in Rwanda. In 2016 she opened the Community Center Oasis of Peace in order to school children, offer psychosocial support to victims of torture and rape, and to implement activities of sustainable development in areas such as health, education, vocational training, culture and income-generation.
Marguerite Barankitse holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Louvain-la-Neuve. Her vision is to instill dignity in the refugees and to allow them to keep their dreams alive: “Evil never has the last word – love always wins out” is one of Maggy’s maxims. For her work in Burundi, she has received several awards and highly prestigious humanitarian prizes such as the Opus Prize, the UNESCO Prize, and the World’s Children’s Prize, also known as the “Nobel Prize” for humanitarian work aimed at improving the lives of children and their chances of a better future. In 2016, she was awarded the inaugural global humanitarian award, the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity.
>> Registration will close 48h before the event
Related publication
Opinión CIDOB nº. 511: Burundi: de la memoria del genocidio a la gestión del refugio.
Elena Sánchez-Montijano, Senior Research Fellow