Agathe Uwilingiyimana

Major Bernard Ntuyahaga was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for the murder of Uwilingiyimana and the U.N. peacekeepers, but the charges were dropped. He was eventually convicted of murder of the peacekeepers. On 18 December 2008, the ICTR found Colonel Théoneste Bagosora guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes and sentenced him to life imprisonment, in part due to his involvement in the murders of Uwilingiyimana and the Belgian peacekeepers.

The swearing in of the Broad Based Transitional Government (BBTG), was to have taken place on 25 March 1994. At that point, Uwilingiyimana was to have stepped down in favor of Faustin Twagiramungu, having been guaranteed a lower-level ministerial post in the new government. However, the RPF did not appear at the ceremony, postponing the establishment of the new regime. She reached agreement with them that the new government would be sworn in on the following day.

The talks between President Habyarimana, Uwilingiyimana, and the Rwandan Patriotic Front were never concluded, and the president's plane was shot down by rockets at around 8:30 pm on 6 April 1994. From Habyarimana's death until her assassination the following morning (approximately 14 hours), Prime Minister Uwilingiyimana was Rwanda's constitutional head of state and of government.

Seeing the stand-off outside her home, Uwilingiyimana and her family took refuge in the Kigali U.N. volunteer compound around 8 am. Eyewitnesses to the inquiry on U.N. actions say that Rwandan soldiers entered the compound at 10 am and searched it for Uwilingiyimana. Fearing for the lives of her children, Uwilingiyimana and her husband emerged. The presidential guard killed them both on the morning of 7 April 1994; Uwilingiyimana had been shot point-blank in the head and her body was found naked with a beer bottle stuffed up her vagina. Her children escaped and eventually took refuge in Switzerland. In his book, Me Against My Brother, Scott Peterson writes that the U.N. troops sent to protect Uwilingiyimana were castrated, gagged with their own genitalia, and then murdered. However, page 44 and 45 of the UNKIBAT-01 Tab 241 of the Prosecution Case File of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, states clearly: "Although the bodies show signs of fighting, some have rifle-but or bayonet injuries, some show signs of having been struck by machetes or bullet wounds, there are NO traces of sadistic mutilations (eyes gouged out, nose or other organs cut off) as was incorrectly described in certain articles".

On 17 July 1993, after a meeting between President Habyarimana and all five parties, Uwilingiyimana became prime minister of Rwanda, replacing Nsengiyaremye. The political manoeuvering leading to her position as prime minister had no support from the rank-and-file of the MDR. The party was divided between moderates and extremists, and she was a moderate. Nsengiyaremye and the MDR convened an extraordinary congress in Kabusunzu on 23–24 July, during which hardliners had her resign from the party, together with the president of MDR, Faustin Twagiramungu.

The Habyarimana–Uwilingiyimana government had the daunting task of successfully completing the Arusha Accords with the rebel Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), the Tutsi-dominated guerilla movement. An agreement between Habyarimana, the five opposition parties (led ostensibly by Uwilingiyimana), and the RPF, was finally reached on 4 August 1993. Under Arusha Accords, Habyarimana's ruling MRND would take the transitional presidency, and the Prime Minister would be Faustin Twagiramungu from the MDR.

President Habyarimana officially dismissed her as prime minister on 4 August 1993, eighteen days after her appointment to the office, but she stayed on in a caretaker capacity for eight months, until her death in April 1994. This was despite being excoriated by all the Hutu-dominated parties, including her own MDR, and President Habyrimana's ruling party, which held a press conference in January 1994 attacking Uwilingiyimana for being a "political trickster".

She joined the Republican Democratic Movement (MDR), 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 Juvénal Habyarimana and five major opposition parties. As education minister Uwilingiyamana abolished the academic ethnic quota system, awarding public school places and scholarships by open merit ranking. This came in the midst of the Rwandan Civil War of 1990–94, and earned her the enmity of the Hutu extremists, as the quota system had favoured Hutus.

In 1986 she created a Soriority and Credit Cooperative Society among the staff of the Butare academic school, and her high-profile role in the self-help organization brought her to the attention of the Kigali authorities, who wanted to appoint decision makers from the discontented south of the country. In 1989 she became a director in the Ministry of Commerce.

Uwilingiyimana married a high-school classmate, Ignace Barahira, in 1976; she kept her maiden name. She had the first of her five children the next year.

After success in public examinations she was educated at Notre Dame des Cîteaux Secondary School, and obtained the certificate to teach humanities in 1973. She continued with graduate studies in mathematics and chemistry, after which she became a schoolteacher in Butare in 1976. By 1983 she was teaching chemistry at the National University of Rwanda in Butare. She received a B.Sc. in 1985, and taught chemistry for four years in Butare academic schools. She received criticism from traditionalists for promoting mathematics and science study amongst female students.

Agathe Uwilingiyimana (Kinyarwanda: [u.wǐː.ɾiː.ɲɟi.jí.mɑ̂ː.nɑ] ; 23 May 1953 – 7 April 1994), sometimes known as Madame Agathe, was a Rwandan political figure. She 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. She was Rwanda's first and so far only female prime minister.

Agathe Uwilingiyimana was born 23 May 1953 in the village of Nyaruhengeri in the southern Rwandan province Butare, 140 km southeast of the Rwandan capital Kigali. She moved with her farming parents to the Belgian Congo to find work, but they moved back to Butare in 1957. She was a member of the Hutu ethnicity that makes up the majority of the Rwandan population.