Agathe Uwilingiyimana served as Prime Minister of Rwanda from 18 July 1993 until her assassination on 7 April 1994, during the opening stages of the Rwandan genocide.
23 Facts About Agathe Uwilingiyimana
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana was Rwanda's acting head of state in the hours leading up to her death.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana was Rwanda's first and so far only female prime minister.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana was born 23 May 1953 in the village of Nyaruhengeri, Butare Province in southern Rwanda, 140 kilometres southeast of the capital Kigali.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana moved with her farming parents to the Belgian Congo to find work, but they moved back to Butare in 1957.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana was a member of the Hutu ethnicity that made up the majority of the Rwandan population.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana continued with graduate studies in mathematics and chemistry, after which she became a schoolteacher in Butare in 1976.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana received criticism from traditionalists for promoting mathematics and science study amongst female students.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana married a high-school classmate, Ignace Barahira, in 1976; she kept her maiden name, as is customary for Rwandese women.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana had the first of her five children the next year.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana joined the Republican Democratic Movement, an opposition party, in 1992, and that April was appointed Minister of Education by Dismas Nsengiyaremye, the first opposition prime minister under a power-sharing scheme negotiated between President Juvenal Habyarimana and five major opposition parties.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana succeeded Nsengiyaremye as Rwanda's prime minister on July 17,1993, following a meeting between President Habyarimana and the five parties.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana briefly resigned in view of her lack of support, but a group of prominent personalities, including Twagiramungu and Theoneste Bagosora, made her renounce her resignation.
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At that point, Agathe Uwilingiyimana was to have stepped down in favor of Faustin Twagiramungu, having been guaranteed a lower-level ministerial post in the new government.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana reached agreement with them that the new government would be sworn in on the following day.
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From Habyarimana's death until her assassination the following morning, Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana was Rwanda's constitutional head of state and of government.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana said her home was under siege, and gave her last recorded words:.
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The presidential guard killed them both on the morning of 7 April 1994; Agathe Uwilingiyimana had been shot point-blank.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana's children escaped and eventually took refuge in Switzerland.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana was eventually convicted of murder of the peacekeepers.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana is remembered as a pioneer in women's rights and education in Rwanda, and her efforts to reconcile ethnic differences in the country.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana was contemporaneous with Sylvie Kinigi, Prime Minister of Burundi.
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Agathe Uwilingiyimana was succeeded as prime minister of the interim government by Jean Kambanda, a Hutu hardliner.